Some golem damsel. That sobered Grundy. There was no such creature; he was the only one of his kind.
“Chameleon should be very pretty by the time I get back,” Bink murmured, mostly to himself. Grundy realized that there had been method in Bink’s generosity; he had been adventuring during the period when his wife was least attractive, and would return when she, was most attractive. Even in old age, Chameleon in her pretty phase was something special. Grundy would have settled for a Golem damsel of that nature.
It was agreed. Bink and Chester returned up the tunnel, after tying the bed to Stella’s back. At the moment of parting, Bink turned seriously to Grundy. “Be careful,” he cautioned, just as if he had paid any attention to that before. Then the Gap Dragoness whomped forward, and Grundy had to cling desperately to the bed to prevent himself from flying off at each whomp. He hoped Snortimer wasn’t getting motion sick. It was a long way across Xanth, especially by whomp-travel, and they were only partway along by nightfall. Grundy had managed to get some sleep during the day, but now Stella needed to rest. They discussed it, and decided that Grundy and Snortimer would go on ahead, and Stella would catch up to them the next day, hauling the bed. She was able to crawl out of the harness so that she could hunt, and the truth was that Grundy was happy to be elsewhere while she was hunting.
Snortimer started out somewhat wobbly, but got unkinked after a while and moved along well enough. They made good progress along the valley of the Gap, keeping mostly to the shadows where the moonbeams couldn’t reach. But after a while a cloud blotted out the moon. That suited Snortimer just fine, but Grundy was annoyed. “Who do you think you are, cutting off my light?” he demanded in human tongue. It was rhetorical; only King Dor could talk to the inanimate and have it answer.
The cloud only intensified, sealing off the last vestige of light, so that Grundy could not see at all. He was all right, as Snortimer remained perfectly sure-handed in the dark, but still it bothered him. “You fog-faced puff of dirty mist!” he railed at the cloud. “If you were a living creature I’d prick your mangy balloon!”
There was a rumble of thunder. Oh, no—it was fixing to rain! “What noise is this?” Grundy demanded. “You think you’re pretty big stuff, sounding off, don’t you! Well, you’re nothing but hot air!”
There was a louder peal of thunder. Could the cloud hear him, or understand him? Grundy remembered something Ivy had said about a mean little cloud called Cumulo Fracto Nimbus who thought it was a king. Maybe this was that one. If so, he knew how to insult it—and he was in just the mood to do it.
“You bag of wind,” he yelled. “You call yourself a king? You stink to high heaven!”
Now there was no doubt the cloud heard him. There was a gust of wind and a roll of thunder that traversed the Chasm.
Grundy was beginning to enjoy this. He realized that he would get wet, but he could handle that. There wasn’t much else the cloud could do, because it couldn’t see him in the dark, and he was constantly moving. “You sound like a stink-horn!” he yelled. “Smell like it, too!”
A bolt of lightning struck the ground where he had been. Oh, that cloud was angry! Obviously it could understand the human language, and it had a bad-weather temper. Ivy had described it perfectly: a grandiose stormcloud with delusions of grandeur.
But now dawn was approaching. That meant they would have to stop and camp for the day—and be a sitting target for the lightning. Grundy hadn’t thought that far ahead. What was he to do now? And, to his horror, Grundy realized he had made another oversight: traveling without Snortimer’s bed. Now the Bed Monster had no bed to hide under, as the dangerous light came. If the storm didn’t get them, the daylight would.
They would simply have to find a place dark enough to protect Snortimer until the dragoness caught up with the bed. “Look for a cave!” Grundy directed his steed in monster-tongue.
Fortunately the Gap was riddled with crevices and caves. Snortimer swerved to the side and up the sheer cliff, surprising him; Grundy hadn’t realized how well the monster could climb. Some distance up the side there was an opening, and they crawled in. Inside there was a fairly comfortable cave chamber, quite suitable for their purpose. It had enough curvature to guarantee that no beam of light could strike Snortimer as long as he remained away from the entrance.
Grundy, however, didn’t need to stay back. He dismounted and stood at the front. “Nyah, nyah, you flatulent cloud!” he yelled. “Your lightning bolts are too dull to stick in the ground!”
Furious, the cloud hurled a bolt at him. But it missed; the broad surface of the cliff provided nothing for a bolt to fix on. The bolt bounced off the stone above, and clattered to the base, where it lay dented and harmless, slowly dulling from white-hot to red-hot. In time it would become cold iron gray, and eventually rust away. A spent bolt was a sad thing.
“You call yourself a storm?” Grundy yelled. “I call you Cumulo-Fracto-Numbskull!”
Oh, the cloud was mad! Lightning flashed across it, revealing a puffy cloud-face surmounted by a foggy crown. This was Fracto, all right!
“I can see you’re a real dunderhead!” Grundy called, taking off on the “thunderhead” he knew the cloud preferred to be called. “I’ll bet even I can make water better than you can!”
That did it. Fracto set about making water. Rain poured down, splattering across the cliff. Some splashed in, but promptly seeped out again; this cave was not only secure from light, it was safe from flooding too.
Meanwhile, day was arriving; even the full fury of the storm could not blank out all the light of the sun. “You’ll dry up any minute now, mist-for-brains!” Grundy shouted.
The rain poured down with doubled intensity. Water sheeted along the cliff and crashed in a torrent into the ground below. Puddles developed and expanded. It was, Grundy had to admit to himself, an impressive effort.
But of course that wasn’t what he told Fracto. “If that’s the best you can do, Cumulo-Fatso, you’d better retire to some greener pasture and sprinkle their flowers. A baby could dribble better than you can!”
It wasn’t possible for the storm to get any angrier, but it succeeded anyway. A deluge came down while Grundy continued to hurl up insults. He hadn’t had a name-calling workout like this in years!
The puddles expanded to ponds, and to little lakes. Still the water poured down. The liquid had no ready egress (Grundy smiled as that word came to him, thinking of birds and pewter) from the Gap, so it piled up. The bottom was becoming a single expanse of water, like an inlet from the sea. “Is that the best you can do, you cumbersome fractious nincompoop kinky clown of a cloud?” he demanded.
The king-cloud was so enraged that jags of lightning shot out of its posterior, illuminating the whole Chasm. Thunder crashed continuously, wind whipped violently about, and rain came down in bucketfuls. The water level rose, creeping up toward Grundy’s cave.
Now, belatedly, he realized what could happen. If the rainfall continued unabated, it could flood the cave, forcing Snortimer out into the light, wiping him out.
Then, faintly over the constant noise of the rain, he heard splashing. He peered, and saw a distant cloud of steam. Stella Steamer was caught in the water, and by the look of it she couldn’t swim. She was being carried along by the flow of it, thrashing about, trying to keep her head above the surface.
“Enough!” he cried. “I’ll stop insulting you, Feculo!”
But now the cloud had the advantage, and had no intention of letting it go. The water descended without pause, deepening the lake. Fracto didn’t care if Stella drowned, as long as he got Grundy too!
“Stella!” Grundy screamed in dragon-tongue. “Find something to hang on to!”
But there was nothing to anchor her. Slowly she was carried on past his cave, having increasing difficulty as the water deepened. The bed was tied to her back, hampering her. She was surely going to drown!
Grundy scrambled back inside the cave. “Snortimer, the water’s rising, the dragon??
?s drowning, and we’ll drown too if we don’t get out of here!” he exclaimed.
“I can take care of that,” Snortimer said.
“You can? How?”
“I’ll just pull the plug.”
“The what?”
“Let’s go!” Snortimer said. “But you’ll have to shield me from the light!”
Grundy jumped on, spreading his body as well as he could to intercept what dim light there was, and the monster scrambled out of the cave. Snortimer winced as the palest light surrounded him; then he dropped into the water and sank below. Grundy held his breath and hung on, not knowing what was happening.
Snortimer scrambled rapidly hand over hand down under the water, moving along the bottom of what was now a deep lake. In a moment he came to a large circular plate set in the ground. He braced two arms against the ground, grabbed the edge of the disk with two more, and used another to steady himself. He hauled on the disk.
Slowly the disk came up. Then it was out of its hole, and water was pouring through. Snortimer hauled it to the side and let it go; it snagged in a crack and hung there, letting the current go by.
Now the water was sucking rapidly through the hole left by the disk. Snortimer clung to the ground, and Grundy clung to Snortimer, and the water rushed by them with increasing force. Grundy didn’t know how long he could hold his breath, but he had no choice. If he stopped holding it, he would drown.
Surprisingly swiftly, the water sucked down through the hole, and the lake in the Chasm drained. Soon there was nothing remaining but puddles.
Already Snortimer was scrambling in the direction the dragon had gone. “My bed!” he gasped.
His bed, of course! He had to get under cover before the cloud cleared up!
They found Stella downstream, shaking herself. Snortimer dived under the bed that was still strapped to her back. The bed was soaking, but it represented security for the monster.
Just in time! Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, seeing the drop in the level of water, was giving it up as a bad job. Grundy was tempted to call, “Good riddance!” at the cloud, but refrained; his mouth had caused enough trouble already.
Where had all the water gone, he wondered? There had been so much of it—and now it was all belowground. Was it rushing through endless caverns, down to some sunless sea? Were there people down there, or monsters, and if so, how were they handling all that water? Probably it would not be smart to stay around long enough to find out; they might not be entirely pleased by the abrupt deluge.
Stella seemed all right; the water had drained in time, and she was of a tough species. Grundy settled on top of the squishy bed and relaxed as she whomped on.
Fracto, his rage spent, floated away, and the sun reappeared. Slowly the bed dried out. By nightfall it no longer squished.
This night Grundy and Snortimer did not range far ahead; they decided to wait until the dragoness was ready to move in the morning. After all, there might not be another plug, ahead.
6
Monster Tales
On the third day they arrived at the eastern coast. The Gap extended into the ocean, and an island was offshore. That had once been known as the Isle of Illusion, for Queen Iris had resided there, clothing the region with illusion. Today it was occupied by no one of consequence. “Every so often someone sends up a firebird or something,” Stella remarked. “I don’t know what they’re up to; maybe they just like to watch the flames from the tail.”
That was probably it. “Where is the Monster of the Sea?” Grundy asked.
“He can be anywhere along the coast,” she growled. “You’ll have to summon him.”
“How do I do that?”
“He only comes for damsels in distress. If you catch a damsel and chain her to a post by the shore—”
“I can’t do that!” Grundy protested.
She considered. “I suppose you can’t. You’re too small.”
That wasn’t the way Grundy had meant it, but he stifled his smart remark. “What other way?”
“Maybe if you pretend there’s a damsel in distress—”
That seemed possible. “We’ll fashion a dummy, and I’ll imitate her voice,” Grundy decided.
“Good luck,” Stella growled. “I’ve got to go back on patrol.” She whomped back down the Chasm.
At night, Snortimer came out and foraged for the makings of a dummy. He gathered driftwood that was bent into shapely configurations, and tied it together with vine. He was really pretty handy—which wasn’t surprising, considering that he was mostly made of arms and hands.
Grundy, searching for food, suddenly felt his foot go cold. It was as if he had stepped in deep snow—but there was no snow. He checked, and discovered that he had stepped on a burr. No wonder! Those things were impossibly chilly.
They set up the dummy at the shore. Then Grundy imitated its voice. “Oh, help!” he wailed in the most distraught femalish tone. “I’m in horrible distress!”
Nothing happened. But of course it could take the monster time to arrive. Grundy repeated the call every hour or so, hoping it would be heard.
Dawn came, and they retreated to the bed. The night had been quiet, but the day was otherwise.
First, a little roc swooped down, evidently taking the bed for a tidbit. Too late, Grundy realized that they should have concealed it. The roc would simply lift it up and carry it away, and he dreaded to think what would happen to Snortimer.
Grundy dashed across the sand to the spot where he had stepped on the burr. It was still there. He picked it up, though it chilled his hand to the bone, and charged back just as the roc arrived. The bird was just extending its claws toward the bed as Grundy hurled the burr at its head.
The roc, with an automatic reflex, snapped the burr out of the air and swallowed it. Then the bird froze, not quite literally. It forgot the bed and pumped its wings, flying up—but there was a rather strange expression on its beak, and ice was forming on the outside of its craw. It flew away somewhat erratically.
Grundy smiled. It was a young roc, still inexperienced. A mature one would have known better than to eat the burr. Next time, this one would know better. He had just contributed to its growing pains, so to speak.
He settled down to rest, as there was nothing he could do about the bed right now. At night he could get Snortimer to haul it across the sand to cover, for Grundy himself lacked the strength. But he remained halfway alert.
In the late afternoon he was roused by a distant scraping or brushing sound. He jumped up and looked—and was dismayed. A beachcomber was coming down the beach. This was a giant comb with enormous teeth, advancing across the sand, combing out all debris. Behind it the sand was level and clean; the debris piled up in front of it, to be moved to some dumping site. Obviously the bed would be dumped along with the rest of the trash.
Desperately Grundy looked around. He remembered seeing something that might—yes! There was a small pumpkin growing at the fringe. He dashed across to it, used a sharp shell-fragment to saw it free of its vine, and shoved with all his might. The pumpkin weighed more than he did, but the beach was slightly inclined, and he was able to start it rolling just as the beachcomber arrived.
The comb caught the pumpkin and tumbled it about. The pumpkin burst, getting its innards all over the comb’s teeth. That was exactly what Grundy had hoped for.
The teeth absorbed the juices of the pumpkin. Then the magic of the pumpkin acted on them. They were pumped up, swelling like balloons. In moments, the comb ground to a halt, unable to push its own fat teeth through the sand. The bed had been saved, again.
When evening came, they moved the bed to safety under a mys-tree, where any intruder would have great difficulty figuring things out. Grundy continued to imitate the calls and pleas of the dummy-damsel, though he had some private reservations about seeking the aid of a monster that preferred to feed on this sort of prey.
Next day, about noon, the Monster of the Sea arrived. First a ripple developed in the water, then a wake;
finally a grotesque head poked up. The Monster had a flexible pink snout, bulging nostrils, cauliflower ears and two enormous ivory tusks. His eyes seemed beady, but as he came closer Grundy realized that they were more like bloodshot saucers; it was the size of the creature that made them seem small.
Grundy glanced down and discovered that his knees hadn’t changed to jelly; they merely felt that way. Did he really want to continue this mission? “That’s the ugliest puss I’ve ever seen!” he breathed.
The Monster honked. Grundy jumped; naturally he understood the honk, and what it signified was this: “And you’re the least significant twerp I’ve ever seen!”
Those big, convoluted ears were good at hearing! “I’m on a Quest,” Grundy replied defensively in honky.
“Aren’t we all!” the Monster agreed.
“You? What’s your Quest?”
“I liberate damsels in distress.” The Monster waded through the shallow surf toward the dummy. He had huge flippers and a serpentine tail, and he was even bigger than he had seemed. Strings of seaweed were festooned across his scales. He smelled of ill fish.
“Um, about that particular damsel—” Grundy began.
“Be with you in a moment, mini-pint,” the Monster honked as he heaved himself out of the water and hauled his blubbery body somewhat awkwardly across the sand. “First things first.”
“But you see that’s not really a—”
“I came to liberate her, and liberate her I shall!”
“She’s a dummy. She—”
“Don’t call any damsel a dummy!” the Monster chided him, continuing forward.
“But this one is really a—” Grundy said.
The Monster halted abruptly, eyes on the dummy. “That’s no damsel!” he honked.
“It’s a dummy, dummy!” Grundy exclaimed. “I’ve been trying to tell you!”
“A mock-damsel!” the Monster honked, amazed. “Who would do a thing like that?”
“Well, you see—”
“Here I swam half the length of Xanth at top velocity to reach the poor damsel before she expired, and all for nothing?”