Esrever Doom

  “In Mundania, the Everglades turned out to be a broad river,” Kody said, remembering. “About two hundred miles wide and six inches deep, on average. Then they channelized one of the contributing rivers, and started to dry it up.”

  “The Demon Corps of Engineers did that here,” Yukay said. “They took hold of the S’s in the Kiss Mee River and pulled them straight, into L’s, so that it became the Kill Mee River. It stopped being friendly and became hateful. Nobody could stand it, and finally they had to put the curves back in. Now it is good for honeymooners again.”

  “In Mundania that’s Kissimmee,” Kody said.

  “Mundania does tend to be sloppy,” she agreed.

  “Now let’s check our difference,” he said. “You remain plain, not as bad as before.”

  “Same to you,” she said. “So we are evidently farther away from the Bomb. That’s progress, of a sort.”

  “Yes. If it’s not to the south, it must be to the north.”

  “You folk can handle this without me,” Zosi said. “I don’t need to be here.”

  She was really feeling down. “I’ll talk to her,” Kody said.

  “You do that while we stretch,” Naomi said. She stretched, in the process showing off the fine points of her torso. Naturally Yukay then had to stretch too, and her points were just as fine.

  But the display made Ivan turn away, repulsed. “Why couldn’t you girls have done that while we were still in Hades?” he asked.

  “Because you would have freaked out, ruining the effect,” Naomi said.

  “Let’s go explore while we wait,” Ivan said to Zap.

  “Squawk,” the griffin agreed, amused. She was neither freaked nor repulsed by human torsos, however pretty or ugly they might be.

  Kody took Zosi by the hand and led her to a neighboring copse of palms. The palms, of course, were giant hands projecting from the ground, their fingers pointing to the sky. They sat down behind one, shielded from the gaze of the others. There was a little sign saying NO SMOKING. Kody smiled briefly, seeing it, then focused on his companion.

  “Zosi, you have a right to make your own decision, whatever it is,” he said. “You should not feel any guilt in that. I know I would hate to become a zombie, and I suspect that is the inverse of your feeling.”

  “I’m not used to guilt. I don’t know how to handle it.”

  “Just abolish it. It is undeserved.”

  “I can’t.”

  He took hold of her shoulders. “Zosi—”

  She leaned forward and kissed him. Surprised, he took a moment to react. Then he kissed her back, emphatically.

  “It’s not just guilt,” she said. “It’s that if I live, I will have to live without you. I know you will be gone soon.”

  “Zosi, I can’t stay in Xanth! I’m not even really here.”

  “I know.” Tears streaked down her face.

  Suddenly he was coming to know about guilt. He was a significant part of her unhappiness. She did not deserve it. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “It’s not your fault. It’s my foolish inability to control my emotions, after not having any for so long.”

  “That inability is not limited to you. I—I have never felt about a girl the way I am coming to feel about you. If everything else were equal…” He trailed off, unable to formulate what he was feeling.

  “What about Naomi and Yukay? They’re prettier than I am.”

  “Yes, and they know it. I guess I prefer a girl I can believe in.”

  She gazed at him, her gray hair somehow making her look young and vulnerable. “What would you do right now, if you could do anything you wanted?”

  “This.” He kissed her again.

  “Are you getting a crush on me?” she asked, amazed.

  “I believe I am, foolish as it may be.”

  She smiled. “Then maybe there is hope.”

  “Zosi, any long-term relationship we might have is doomed. We both knew that from the outset.”

  “Yes. There is only the present. What else would you do now, if—”

  He kissed her with burgeoning passion. In three-quarters of a moment they were lying on the ground, embraced, and his hands were hungrily exploring her body as the kiss continued. She matched him move for move, opening her blouse, drawing down her skirt.

  There was a shriek.

  They paused, mutually disheveled.

  Then they saw the huge shape ascending into the sky, trailing streamers of smoke. It wasn’t Zap. It was a dragon, carrying something.

  There was another shriek. That something was Naomi!

  They ran back toward their original site, tucking things in as they went. Yukay was there, in a dissipating cloud of smoke, also screaming. “The dragon! We didn’t see it! It just swooped down, choked us in smoke, and grabbed Naomi!”

  “I should have been more alert,” Kody said.

  “I shouldn’t have distracted you,” Zosi said.

  “I should have grabbed her,” Yukay said. “So we would be too heavy together for it to carry off.”

  Ivan and Zap came running back. “We should have been here!” he cried.

  “Squawk!”

  Guilt galore!

  After another frenzied, useless moment, Kody hauled in his wits. “Maybe it’s not too late to save her. How can we do it?”

  “If we can find the dragon’s nest, maybe we can attack,” Ivan said. “Before the dragon—”

  “Eats her,” Yukay said succinctly.

  “She’s a naga,” Zosi said. “Couldn’t she change and get away?”

  “Not while in the air; she would drop to her death. Not in the dragon’s nest; that will be inaccessible and inescapable, regardless of her form.”

  Kody spoke to Zap. “Can you locate the dragon’s nest?”

  “Squawk!” Zap spread her wings and bounded into the air. Soon she was flying on the trail of the dragon, evidently sniffing its wake of smoke.

  “Assuming she locates the nest,” Kody said, “what can we do then?”

  “Against a dragon that size? Feed it.” Yukay grimaced. “With our bodies.”

  “Feed it,” Kody repeated. “Zosi, how big can you make a sandwich?”

  “Jumbo is my limit. I could conjure a number of them. But the dragon wouldn’t eat them. Dragons eat live meat.”

  “But if we threw them into its mouth, down its throat, it might choke on them.”

  “It would take a hundred sandwiches all at once to make it choke,” Yukay said. “Momentarily. Then it would blow them out on a wave of smoke.”

  “Suppose I put a chip of reverse wood in one?”

  Yukay paused, considering. “Depends on the manner the sandwich reversed.”

  “Oops. I was thinking of it reversing the dragon somehow. But you’re right; it would reverse the sandwich first.”

  “Still, Zap might deliver such a sandwich.”

  “Test one,” Ivan suggested.

  Zosi conjured a sandwich and set it down on the ground. Kody conjured a chip. He flipped the chip onto the sandwich. It bounced off, struck the ground, and splintered into dust.

  Nothing happened to the sandwich.

  “Squawk, as Zap would say,” Ivan said.

  Yukay looked at him. “You say it changed? You can smell it?”

  “Yes. It’s different.”

  Now Kody smelled it too. “Gasoline!” he said. He picked up the sandwich, carefully, and pulled it open. “Jellied gasoline! I had forgotten about that. Zosi can make them directly.”

  “What is that?” Ivan asked.

  “An extremely dangerous and ugly weapon, in Mundania. They put it in bombs, and when they detonate they spray gasoline all around, and it burns the skin off any people nearby. It doesn’t kill them immediately, just burns off their skin. Slow death by torture.”

  “I wouldn’t much like Mundania,” Yukay said, shuddering.

  “But if that sandwich got tossed down the throat of the dragon…” Ivan said.

/>   They looked at each other. “I think we’ve got our weapon,” Kody said.

  “Assuming Zap could deliver it,” Yukay said.

  Ivan shook his head. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” Kody asked.

  “I have come to know her somewhat,” Ivan said. “Zap is a pacifist. She doesn’t believe in killing. Not even dragons. That’s her problem as a griffin.”

  “That’s right!” Yukay agreed. “That soul she got really messes her up, in griffin terms. It makes her nice for us, but she’s no fighter now.”

  “Scratch one notion,” Kody agreed. “It also occurs to me that though it might work on a fire dragon, it probably wouldn’t on a smoker. Not enough heat to detonate it, without a primer.”

  “We’ve got to think of something else,” Yukay said.

  Kody walked in a circle, concentrating. A bulb flashed over his head.

  “What?” Ivan asked.

  “When I was talking with Zosi I saw something.”

  Yukay frowned, her eyes flicking down toward her bosom. “I could have shown you more.”

  Zosi blushed. Kody would have preferred that she hadn’t, as it tended to give away their activity. Yukay had made a shrewd guess.

  “I saw a No Smoking sign. Given the way things tend to be literal in Xanth, could that be serious?”

  Yukay considered it. “No Smoking—as in dragon breath? I don’t know what it would mean in Mundania, but yes, that well might be its effect.”

  “So if we could deliver that sign to the dragon’s nest, that might deprive it of its main weapon. Without actually hurting it, so Zap would not have to be concerned.”

  “That might be,” Yukay said. “But Naomi would still be confined to the nest, and that dragon would still be formidable. We would need more.”

  “Could Zap carry my weight, flying? So I could get close and flip a chip at the dragon? That might turn it into a worm.”

  “She might. But you don’t want to get smoked before you get there. And if you did, and flipped your chip, it still might reverse the dragon in some other way, like making it a fire breather instead of a smoker.”

  “Still, it may be our best chance. I’ll fetch the sign.” Kody headed off to the copse. Zosi did not go with him; she remained embarrassed. Still, that might be better than guilt.

  He found the sign and brought it back. As he walked, he saw the griffin in the sky, returning. She had something in her beak. A piece of paper.

  Zap landed about the same time as Kody got back. She presented the paper to him. He took it and found that it was a note.

  To Whom It May Concern: If you want your sweet innocent girl back in that condition, bring a ransom of a bushel of diamonds to my nest before the day is out. Otherwise I will ravish her and then consume her as smoked meat. You will know when that happens by her piercing screams. Signed Dread Dragon.

  PS—The goblins have bushels of diamonds, but I can’t get into their mound. I hope for my captive’s sake that you can. She looks delicious.

  “It’s a ransom note!” Kody exclaimed.

  “That’s a first,” Yukay said. “Usually dragons eat first and talk after.”

  “How did you get the note, Zap?” Zosi asked the griffin.

  It took a bit of dialogue, but they learned that when Zap approached the nest the dragon had signaled in Winged Monster Lingo to approach. It seemed that winged monsters had a policy of not interfering with each other unless absolutely necessary. This applied to all winged monsters, including flying centaurs and winged goblin girls, who did not regard the appellation as derogatory. Violation of the honor code could bring savage reprisals by the Winged Monster authorities, so as a general rule, one winged monster could trust another. So Zap had approached, and the dragon had given her the ransom note. Such a truce did not extend to non-winged monsters, so Naomi had no protection. Neither did the rest of them.

  Kody was not comfortable with any of this. “What’s it like, dealing with goblins?”

  “Bad,” Yukay said. “The girls are pretty and sweet, but the men are ugly, vicious, greedy, horny, and treacherous. Zosi and I would not dare to go near a goblin mound, and it wouldn’t be safe for the rest of you either, for different reasons.”

  “Do they really have bushels of diamonds?”

  “They could. But there’s no price we could pay to get them legitimately. We would have to steal them or take them by force, and that would not be likely.”

  “Yet we shall have to try. We can’t just leave Naomi to her dreadful fate.”

  Yukay shook her head. “We may not have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice,” Kody said. “I will go talk with the goblins. Maybe they will be reasonable.”

  “You plainly have had no experience with goblins.”

  “Correct. Where is this goblin mound?”

  “Squawk,” Zap said, gesturing with a wing.

  Now Kody saw a mound in the distance. The griffin must have spotted it by air. “Thank you.” He nerved himself and started walking toward it.

  “No!” Yukay, Zosi, and Ivan said together, and Zap squawked.

  “I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t at least try,” Kody said, maintaining his pace.

  The others hurried to accompany him. “At least formulate a plan of escape when it doesn’t work,” Yukay said. “So that you don’t wind up in the goblin’s cookpot.”

  “Well, I do have my reverse wood chips.”

  “Against one or two goblins those might work,” she agreed. “Not against hundreds.”

  “So what do you recommend?”

  “Cherries and pineapples.”

  “What, do they like fruit?”

  “I keep forgetting that you really aren’t from Xanth,” Yukay said, frustrated. “Those are explosive fruits. Cherry bombs are small ones, and pineapples are larger ones. Lay down a barrage of those, and the goblins might show a little respect.”

  “Maybe sandwiches,” Zosi said.

  The others looked at her.

  “With jellied gasoline.”

  “Oho!” Yukay said. “That just might do it. Let a few goblins get their heads blown off, and the others just might possibly begin to see reason.”

  “Squawk!” Zap protested.

  “Look, Zap,” Yukay said reasonably. “You know that goblins respect only unsubtle brute force. This may be that.”

  “Squawk.”

  “You’re as oink-headed as Kody is,” Ivan said. “You know she’s right.”

  The griffin acknowledged that, but still did not like the violence.

  “Maybe you should talk to her, Kody,” Yukay said in a mock-serious tone. “You seem to have a touch.”

  Zosi blushed again.

  Was that a challenge? He was beginning to recognize that it would be necessary to bargain from strength, whether with dragons or goblins, and a pacifist griffin would be a liability. “All right.”

  “Squawk?”

  “Zap, I think you have a misapprehension about having a soul. Many souled folk are not pacifists and do not deplore violence. What the soul contributes is the capacity for decency that is often unexploited. Consider the goblins: they are little humanoids, are they not? Therefore they have souls, no? But are they pacifists?”

  Yukay and Ivan burst out laughing, and even Zosi smiled. He had made a point. “You want to be decent, and that’s commendable. But you are a griffin. Decency in griffins should not have the same meaning it does in straight human folk, or in goblins. It would be more like the honor code of warriors. Like the Winged Monster code. Tough love.”

  “Squawk,” Zap said thoughtfully.

  “Violence with honor, when required,” Kody continued. “The ability to kill or be killed, but never carelessly or treacherously. Only when it is called for to oppose indecency. Such as when goblins are about to rape an innocent maiden.”

  “Squawk,” Zap agreed, suffering the revelation.

  “Jellied gasoline sandwiches are weapons, to be used only in warfar
e. But if goblins attack and refuse to see reason, such weapons may be in order. We will try to negotiate honorably with the goblins. Only if we are met with dishonor will we resort to the sandwiches. With luck they won’t be necessary.” He smiled. “For one thing, we still have to figure out how to ignite them.”

  Zap nodded. She was reluctantly ready to go along.

  “One detail you may have overlooked,” Yukay said. “You speak of negotiation. To do that we have to have something the goblins want, and I don’t mean our bodies for fun and food. What do we have to offer?”

  She had him there. “You are too bleeping smart,” Kody said, disgruntled. “I’m stumped. Do you have a suggestion?”

  “Yes. I don’t think it will work, goblins being what they are, but you are welcome to try. It is this: your mission to abolish the Curse will benefit goblins too. So they should try to facilitate it. We need to rescue Naomi to restore our party. So they should contribute their token bit. Like a bushel of diamonds.”

  “It’s a notion,” he agreed. “Zosi, if you will make some sandwiches, I’ll add chips. And little stones that might strike sparks. Maybe the combination will make them capable of detonation. So we’ll have a defense mechanism if we need it.”

  “You’ll need a bag,” Yukay said. She removed her skirt.

  “What are you doing?” Kody asked, taken aback.

  “Making a bag.” She snapped edges together, and held it out.

  “But your legs!” They were great legs.

  “Will nauseate goblins, same as the rest of us. Because of the Curse.”

  She was correct. But she was also perilously close to exposing her panties, barely covered by her shirt. Her reason made sense, but was she also using it as a pretext to flash him, knowing his immunity to the Curse? She might still have seduction in mind, unaware how serious he had gotten about Zosi.

  “Too bad the Curse prevents you from flashing the goblins,” he said. “To freak them out. That would be a useful weapon.”

  “Believe me, I and every pretty girl in Xanth truly misses that weapon.”

  “If I turned zombie, I would be ugly,” Zosi said. “Then maybe I could freak out some.”