Ogre, Ogre

  "Tandy!" he repeated. "It's I. Smash, the tame ogre. Let me take you away from all this."

  She looked up, pale with fright, as if hardly daring to recognize him. Her mouth opened, but only drool came out.

  He reached out to take her arm, to help her to her feet. But she was as limp as a rag doll and would not rise. She just continued sobbing. She seemed little different from her Xanth self. Something was missing.

  Smash considered. For once he was thankful for the Eye Queue, because now he could ponder without pain. What would account for the girl's lethargy and misery? He had thought it was fear, but now that he was here, she should have no further cause for that. It was as if she had lost something vital, like eyesight or--

  Or her soul. Suddenly Smash remembered how vulnerable souls could be, and knew that if anyone were likely to blunder into a soul-hazardous situation, Tandy was the one. She knew so little of the ways of Xanth! No wonder she was desolate and empty.

  "Your soul, Tandy," he said, holding her so that she had to look into his face. "Where is it?"

  Listlessly she nodded toward the crypt. Smash saw that it had a heavy, tight stone door. Scrape marks on the dank ground indicated it had recently been opened. She must have gone inside, perhaps trying to escape the graveyard--and had been ejected without her soul.

  "I will recover it," he said.

  Now she bestirred herself enough to react. "No, no," she moaned. "I am lost. Save yourself."

  "I agreed to protect you," he reminded her. "I shall do it." He set her gently aside and addressed the crypt. The door had no handle, but he knew how to deal with that. He elevated his huge bare fist and smashed it brutally forward into the stone.

  Ouch! Without his gauntlets, his hands were more tender. He could not safely apply his full force. But his blow had accomplished its purpose; the stone door had cracked marginally and jogged a smidgen outward. He applied his horny fingernails and hauled the door unwillingly open.

  A dark hole faced him. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a white outline. It was the skeleton of a man. It reached for him with bone-fingers.

  Smash realized where the bodies in the sunken graves had gone. They had been recruited for guard duty and were walking about this crypt. But he was not in the mood for nuisance. He grabbed the skeleton by the bones of its arm and hauled it violently out of the crypt. The thing flew through the air and landed as a jumble of bones. The ogre proceeded on into the hole.

  Other skeletons appeared, clustering about him, their connections rattling. Smash treated them as he had the first, disconnecting their foot-bones from their leg-bones and other bones, causing the bonepile to grow rapidly. Soon the remaining skeletons reconsidered, not wishing to have him roll their bones, and left him alone.

  Deep in the ground the ogre came to a dark coffin. The smell was mouth-wateringly awful; something really rotten was in there. Was Tandy's soul in there, too? He picked up the box and shook it.

  "All right, all right!" a muffled voice came from the coffin. "You made your point, ogre. You aren't afraid of anything. What do you want?"

  "Give back Tandy's soul," Smash said grimly.

  "I can't do that, ogre," the box protested. "We made a deal. Her freedom for her soul. I let her out of this world; I keep her soul. That's the way we deal here; souls are the currency of this medium."

  "The Siren let her out by removing the gourd," Smash argued. "She never had to pay."

  "Coincidence. I permitted it, once the deal was struck. The negotiation is sealed."

  Smash had lived and thought like an ogre a lot longer than he had lived and thought intelligently. Now he reverted to convenient old habits. He roared, picked up the coffin, and hurled it against the wall. The box fell to the floor, somewhat sprung, and several ceiling stones dropped on it. Nauseating goo dribbled from a crack in it. Dirt sifted down from the chamber wall to smooth the outlines.

  "Maybe further negotiation is possible after all," the voice from the coffin said, somewhat shaken. "Would you consider trading souls?"

  Smash readied his hamfist again. "Wait!" the voice cried, alarmed. It evidently wasn't used to dealing with real brutes. "I merely collect souls; I don't have the authority to give them back. If you want the girl's soul now, your only option is to trade."

  The ogre considered. He might smash the coffin and its occupant to pieces, but that would not necessarily recover the soul. If Tandy's soul were in there, it could get hurt in the battering. So maybe it was better to bargain. "Trade what?"

  "Another soul, of course. How about yours?"

  This box thought he was a typically stupid ogre. "No."

  "Well, someone else's. What about that buxom mature nymph out in Xanth, with the sometime fish-tail? She probably has a luscious, bouncy, juicy soul."

  Smash considered again. He decided, with an un-ogrish precision of ethics, that he could not make any commitments on behalf of the Siren. "Not her soul. And not mine."

  "Then the girl's soul must remain."

  Smash got another whiff of the stench from the coffin and knew that Tandy's soul could not be allowed to rot there. He still did not consider the deal by which the coffin had gotten Tandy's soul to be valid. He stooped to pick up the battered coffin again.

  "Wait!" the voice cried. "There is one other option. You could accede to a lien."

  The ogre paused. "Explain."

  "A lien is a claim on the property of another as security for a debt," the coffin explained. "A lien on your soul would mean that you agree to replace the girl's soul with another soul--and if you don't, then your own soul is forfeit. But you keep your soul in the interim, or most of it."

  It did seem to make sense. "How long an interim?"

  "Shall we say thirty days?"

  "Six months," Smash said. "You think I'm stupid?"

  "I did think that," the coffin confessed. "After all, you are an ogre, and it is well known that the brains of ogres are mostly in their muscles. In fact, their brains are mostly muscles."

  "Not true," Smash said. "An ogre's skull is filled with bone, not muscle."

  "I stand corrected. My skull is filled with necrosis. How about sixty days?"

  "Four months."

  "Split the difference: ninety days."

  "Okay," Smash agreed. "But I don't agree you are entitled to keep any soul, just because you tricked an innocent girl into trading it off for nothing."

  "Are you sure you're an ogre? You don't sound like one."

  "I'm an ogre," Smash affirmed. "Would you like me to throw you around some more to prove it?"

  "That won't be necessary," the coffin said quickly. "If you disagree with the assessment, you must deal with the boss: the Night Stallion. He makes decisions of policy."

  "The Dark Horse?"

  "Close enough; some do call him that. He governs the herd of nightmares."

  It began to fall into place. "This is where the nightmares live? By day, when they're not out delivering bad dreams to sleepers?"

  "Exactly. All the bad dreams are generated here in the gourd, from the raw material of people's fundamental fears--loss, pain, death, shame, and the unknown. The Stallion decides where the dreams go, and the mares take them there. Your girlfriend abused a mare, so it took a lien on her soul, and when she came here, that lien was called due. So her soul is forfeit, and now we have it, and only the Night Stallion can change that. Why don't we set you up for an appointment with the Stallion, and you can settle this directly with him?"

  "An appointment? When?"

  "Well, he has a full calendar. Bad dreams aren't light fancies, you know. There's a lot of evil in the world that needs recognition. It's a lot of work to craft each dream correctly and designate it for exactly the right person at the right time. So the Stallion is quite busy. The first opening is six months hence."

  "But my lien expires in three months!"

  "You're smarter than the average ogre, for sure! You might force an earlier audience, but you'd have to find the Stallion first. He certa
inly won't come to you within three months. I really wouldn't recommend the effort of locating him."

  Smash considered again. It seemed to him that this coffin protested too profusely. Something was being concealed here. Time for the ogre act again. "Perhaps so," he said. "There is therefore no point in restraining my natural inclination for violence." He picked up a rock and crumpled it to chips and sand with one hand. He eyed the coffin.

  "But I'm sure you can find him!" the box said quickly. "All you have to do is seek the path of most resistance. That's all I can tell you, honest!"

  Smash decided that he had gotten as much as he could from the coffin. "Good enough. Give me the girl's soul, and I'll leave my three-month lien and meet the Stallion when I find him."

  "Do you think a soul is something you can just carry in your hand?" the coffin demanded derisively.

  "Yes," Smash said. He contemplated his hand, slowly closing it into a brutishly ugly fist that hovered menacingly over the coffin.

  "Quite," the coffin agreed nervously, sweating another blob of stinking goo. The soul floated up, a luminescent globe that passed right through the wood. Smash cupped it carefully in his hand and tromped from the gloomy chamber. Neither coffin nor skeletons opposed him.

  Tandy sat where she had been, the picture of hopeless girlish misery. "Here is your soul," Smash said, and held out the glowing globe.

  Unbelievingly, she reached for it. The globe expanded at her touch, becoming a ghost-shape that quickly overlapped her body and merged. For an instant her entire body glowed, right through the tattered red dress; then she was her normal self. "Oh, Smash, you did it!" she exclaimed. "I love you! You recovered my soul from that awful corpse!"

  "I promised to protect you," he said gruffly.

  "How can I reward you?" She was actually pinching herself, amazed by her restoration. Smash, too, was amazed; he had not before appreciated how much difference a person's soul made.

  "No reward," he insisted. "It's part of my job, my service for my Answer."

  She considered. "Yes, I suppose. But how ever did you do it? I thought there was no way--"

  "I had to indulge my natural propensities slightly," he admitted, glancing at the pile of bones he had made. The bones shuddered and settled lower, eager to avoid his attention.

  "Oh. I guess you were more terrible than the skeletons were," she said.

  "Naturally. That is the nature of ogres. We're worse than anything." Smash thought it best not to inform her of the actual nature of his deal. "Let's get out of here."

  "Oh, yes! But how?"

  That was another problem. He could bash through walls, but the force holding Tandy and himself inside the gourd was intangible. "I think we'll have to wait for the Siren to free us. All she has to do is move the gourd so we can't look into it any more, but she doesn't know when we'll be finished in here."

  "Oh, I don't want to stay another minute in this horrible place! If I had known what would happen when I peeked into that funny little hole--"

  "It's not a bad place, this," Smash said, trying to cheer her. "It can even be fun."

  "Fun? In this awful graveyard?"

  "Like this." Smash had spied a skeleton poking around a grave, perhaps looking for a new convert. He sneaked up behind it. Ogres didn't have to shake the earth when they walked; they did it because they enjoyed it. "B000!" he bellowed.

  The skeleton leaped right out of its foot-bones and stumbled away, terrified. Tandy had to smile. "You're pretty scary, all right, Smash," she agreed.

  They settled down against a large gravestone. Tandy huddled within the protection of the ogre's huge, hairy arm. It was the only place the poor little girl felt safe in this region.

  Chapter 5

  Prints of Wails

  The Siren greeted them anxiously as they woke to the outer afternoon of Xanth. "I gave you an hour this time, Smash; I just didn't dare wait longer," she said. "Are you all right?"

  "I have my soul back!" Tandy said brightly. "Smash got it for me!"

  The Siren had been looking her age, for her human stock caused her to be less than immortal. Now relief was visibly restoring her youthfulness. "That's wonderful, dear," she said, hugging her. Then, looking at Smash, the Siren sobered again. "But usually souls can't be recovered without hell to pay--ah, that is, some sort of quid pro quo. Are you sure--"

  "I've got mine," Smash said jovially. "Such as it is. Ogres do have souls, don't they?"

  "As far as I know, only people of human derivation have souls," the Siren said. "But all of those do, even if their human ancestor was many generations ago, and so we three qualify. I'm sure yours is as good as any, Smash, and perhaps better than some."

  "It must be stronger and stupider, anyway," he said.

  "I'm so glad it's all right," the Siren said, seeming not entirely convinced. She evidently suspected something, but chose not to make an issue of it at this time. Older females tended to be less innocent than young ones, he realized, but also more discreet.

  They considered their situation. There seemed to be no ogres and no merfolk at Lake Ogre-Chobee, despite its name.

  "Now I remember," Smash said. "The curse-fiends drove the ogres away. They migrated north to the Ogre-fen Ogre Fen. I don't know why I didn't think of that before!"

  "Because you weren't cursed by the Eye Queue before, silly," Tandy said. "You weren't very smart. But that's all right; we'll just go up to the Ogre Fen and find your tribe."

  "But that's the entire length of Xanth!" the Siren protested. "Who knows what horrors lie along the way?"

  "Yes, fun," Smash said.

  "Funny, the Good Magician didn't remind you about the ogres' change of residence," the Siren said. "Well, there's certainly not much doing here. I would like to travel with you a little longer, if I may, at least until I find a lake inhabited by merfolk."

  "Sure, come along, we like your company," Tandy said immediately, and Smash shrugged. It really made little difference to him. He was partially preoccupied by his problem with the lien on his soul. He would soon have to find a pretext to go back into the gourd to search for the Night Stallion and fight for his soul.

  "But first, let's abolish this menace once and for all," the Siren said. She picked up the hypnogourd and lifted it high overhead, throwing it violently to the ground.

  "No!" Smash cried. But before he could move, the gourd had smashed to earth. It fragmented into pinkish pulp, black seeds, and translucent juice. There was no sign of the world he and Tandy had toured within it; the magic was gone.

  The ogre stood staring at the ruin. Now, how could he return to that world to settle his account? Somehow he knew his lien had not been abated by the destruction of the gourd; his avenue to that world had merely been closed. It would take time to manifest, but he knew he was in very bad trouble.

  "Is something wrong?" the Siren asked. "Did you leave something in there?"

  "It doesn't matter," Smash said brusquely. After all, she had meant well, and there was nothing to be done now. No point in upsetting the girls, no matter how privately satisfying it might have been to rant and rave and stomp, ogrestyle, until the whole forest and lake trembled and roiled with reaction to the violence.

  They trekked north through the variegated jungle and tundra and intemperate zones of Xanth. Most of the local flora and fauna left the party alone, wisely not wishing to antagonize an ogre. Upon occasion, some gnarled old bullspruce would paw the earth with a branch-hoof and poke a limb-horn into the way, but a short, sharp blow with Smash's gauntleted fist taught such trees manners. Progress was good.

  They were just considering where to spend the night, when they heard something. There was a thin, barely audible screaming, and a cacophony of ugly pantings, breathings, and raspings. "Something unpleasant is going on," the Siren said.

  "I'll investigate," Smash said, glad for the chance for a little relaxing violence. He tromped toward the commotion.

  A crowd of multilegged things was chasing a little fairy lass, who se
emed to have hurt one of her gossamer wings. She was running this way and that, but wherever she went, creatures like squished caterpillars with tentacles moved to block the way, dribbling hungry drool. The fairy was screaming with fright and horror, and the pursuers were reveling in her discomfort, playing cruelly with her before closing for the kill.

  "What's this?" Smash demanded.

  One of the creatures turned toward him, though it was hard to tell which side was its front. "Stay out of what does not concern you, trashface," it said insolently.

  Now, Smash normally did not involve himself in what did not concern him, but his recent experience with Tandy in the gourd had sensitized him to the plight of small, pretty females in distress. Also, he did not like being told to stay out, despite the compliment to his face. Therefore he reacted with polite force. "Get out of here, you ghastly parody."

  "Oho! the ghastly cried. "So the dumb brute needs a lesson, too!"

  Immediately the creatures oriented on Smash. From a distance they were repulsive; from up close, they were worse. They launched purple spittle at him, belched obscenely all over their bodies, and scratched at him with dirty claws. But several still chased the hapless fairy lass.

  Smash became moderately perturbed. Now it seemed the reputation of ogres was on the line. He picked up a ghastly. It defecated on his paw. He heaved it into the forest. It scurried back. He pounded another into the ground--but it merely squished flat, then rebounded. He tore one apart, but it just stretched impossibly, and snapped back to its normal shapelessness when he let go, leaving a slug of smelly slime on his fingers.

  Now the fairy screamed louder. The ghastlies had almost caught her. Smash had to act quickly or he would be too late to help her. But what would stop these creatures?--Fortunately, his new intelligence assisted. If throwing, pounding, and stretching didn't work, maybe tying would. He grabbed two ghastlies and squeezed and squished them together, tying a knot in their infinitely stretchable limbs. Then he tied in a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Soon he had a huge ball of tied ghastlies, since they kept coming stupidly at him. Their rebounding and stretching didn't do them much good; it merely tightened the knots. In due course, all the ghastlies were balled together, spitting, hissing, scratching, and pooping on each other constantly.