emon could be a lot of mischief in the wrong place. That was of course what had started Volney on his quest for assistance. If only the Good human Magician had been home!

Volney made excellent progress, but he had a way to go, for first he sought the largest creatures, the diggles. They tunneled without using

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claws, boring through the rock magically. They could leave a tunnel behind, or leave the rock as solid as it was before, depending on their mood; normally they left it solid so that they could have the pleasure of boring through it again and again. If they agreed to come to the Vale and bore, the demons would be unable to prevent them, because a tunneling diggle was physically insubstantial. Indeed, the diggles would be able to bore new and curvaceous channels for the river faster than the demons could straighten them. The demons would have to give up the futile effort and find another place to reside.

He reached the deep level of the diggles. Now all he had to do was intercept one, and ask it to take him to its leader.

Easier thought than done. He had no notion of the schedule on which individual diggles traveled. He would just have to wait until one passed within hailing range.

Meanwhile, time to eat. He had brought some fruit from above; he was developing a taste for it. When the Vale was restored, he would have to see about harvesting fruits and nuts there. He doffed his heavy digging claws and ate.

After a bit, his little ears perked. Voles did not depend to a great extent on sound, but at times it could be important. There was some type of scraping in the tunnel he had left behind.

He listened carefully, trying to identify the source of that sound. If some predator from above had happened on his tunnel and was pursuing him, he would have to fight. He had of course plugged the end of it, so that no creature would encounter it by chance, but a predator such as a big serpent could sniff it out. Actually, the advantage would be Volney's, here deep in the rock, because the predator could not maneuver, and Volney's artificial talons could gouge flesh as readily as stone. Very few creatures preyed on voles, in the deep earth. It would be another matter on the surface, where space was unlimited and predators could grow to enormous size. That was why voles normally stayed clear of the surface. Besides, the light was too bright up there. He wondered how the surface creatures were able to stand it. Only his volish ability to change his fur and eyes for the surface conditions permitted him to handle it. Now, in his brown subterranean coat and gray lenses for maximum effect in near darkness, he was more comfortable.

But this did not sound like a snake. It seemed to consist of many tiny scrapings, as of insect legs . . .

Suddenly he realized what it was. Nickelpedes!

This was disaster. He could not use his talons effectively against those little predators; nickelpedes were too small and numerous. They would

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scramble under his defense and start gouging nickel-sized disks from his tender anatomy. It was not possible to reason with them; all they knew was hunger. His tunnel down must have passed close to one of their nests, so that they heard him, and scouted about until they found his hole. Now they were on his trail, following the tunnel to its end, which was where he was.

He could not hope to escape them by dashing back up his tunnel; they would swarm over his body as he passed. He could not hide from them in the darkness, for they needed no light; indeed, bright light killed them. They were guided by touch and smell, as he was, and they could go anywhere he could dig.

He would have to go forward. If he intersected another tunnel, he could go along it and outrun them, for they were too small to travel rapidly. But what other tunnel would there be, here? He was below the normal vole level, into the diggle level, and the diggles had left this rock solid. He could tell by the sound of it when he tapped. He would have to dig his own tunnel, and that would slow him down to nickelpede velocity. Eventually he would tire, even if he took another strength pill, and they would catch him and feed on him. His situation was abruptly desperate.

The noise grew louder. One nickelpede had outdistanced the pack, and was homing in on him. Volney donned his enhanced talons, oriented, and struck savagely down. His sonar-location was accurate; the claw speared the nickelpede, killing it. The things were hard to kill; the strike had to be just right, and with sufficient power, or it merely bounced off their hard shells.

One down—thousands to go! He had to move.

He took another pill. Immediately the strength spread through him. He resumed digging, knowing that this would only prolong the chase; he was too far from the surface to reach it before tiring and slowing and getting caught, and indeed, the 'pedes might well be faster than he, traveling up. But he couldn't just wait to get eaten alive!

If only a diggle would come! Then he could hitch a ride, and be phased through the rock as if it were air, and the miniature monsters would just have to clack their pincers emptily and remain hungry. But there was a characteristic sound the diggles made when traveling, and that sound was not here; he could not depend on finding a diggle.

The rock fairly flew out behind him. Normally he let the debris accumulate behind, blocking the tunnel loosely. But the nickelpedes would have no trouble navigating this; they would simply scramble through the crevices between the fragmented rocks. A serpent he could have balked

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somewhat by packing the plug more tightly, and then striking at its emerging nose. Small size was an advantage to the little gougers. If only he could pack it so tightly as to make it completely solid again—but that was beyond his power. It was a maxim among his kind: only magic could restore bored rock.

He paused for a moment, listening. The sound was there, pursuing. All he had done was maintain his lead, or perhaps improve on it a little. He had to have some better way! But what better way was there? His thinking was going in circles.

Circles . . .

Then he had a notion. He wasn't sure it would work, but it might. Certainly he had to try it.

He resumed his digging, forging through the rock, not even trying to make a plug behind. He wanted velocity, even though the nickelpedes might gain. He dug in a curve, bearing left. He stayed on the same level; that was important.

In due course he could tell by his sense of location and the manner the rock ahead vibrated that he was about to intersect his own tunnel. He dug until only the thinnest wall separated the two. Then he reached up and excavated a hole in the top, forming a vertical tunnel. He made this go straight up for a short distance, then curved it to the level, above the original tunnel. He worked as quickly as he could, though he was tiring; he had little time to spare.

Then, just as the first of the nickelpedes caught up to the end of the lower tunnel, he scooted back down. He speared the nickelpede with a claw and threw its body back. Then he resumed digging, quickly breaking through the thin wall and making a complete intersection of tunnels at the bottom level.

There were nickelpedes massed in the other tunnel, of course. They turned, smelling him, and poured back into his new opening. But Volney scrambled up and away the moment the breakthrough was complete, into his vertical hole. He made the turn to the horizontal level, then stuffed refuse into it, plugging it behind him, so that what remained was a hole up that dead ended.

Now he settled down and waited, resting. If this worked, he had saved himself. If not . . .

It worked. The nickelpedes were not the smartest of creatures. They were tracking him mostly by following the tunnel. As long as it smelled of him, they would pursue it to its end. It was a system that was normally effective. But now the tunnel was a loop, and so it never ended. They were going around and around forever. If any tried the hole in the ceil-

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ing, they stopped when they discovered that it went nowhere; obviously he wasn't there. Some few might work their way through the plug and reach his hideout, but those few he could spear with the talon. The great majority were stuck in the trap he had devised: circularity.

Volney rested, recovering his strength. It was important that he not attract attention to himself; if he moved too much, the nickelpedes might feel the vibration and start searching for it. A few did come through to him, and these he did quietly spear. When he was sure he was sensitized to their entry, he slept; any coming through would wake him long enough for spearing.

Then, finally, he heard a diggle. His wait was over! It no longer mattered if the nickelpedes became aware of him.

He started digging, going in a direction that would put him directly hi the path of the diggle. When he got there, he waited.

The diggle was traveling slowly. Its wormlike nose projected into the chamber Volney had formed. "Ho, Dig!" he cried in the language common to all the members of the great family of voles. The magic of Xanth made communication intelligible to all the members of a particular group, such as the voles, or the humanoids, or the dragons. Unfortunately it did not do the same between groups, which was why Volney was unusual; he had learned the humanoid mode. It had been a terrible struggle to master the peculiar conventions of the alien system, but he had persevered, and succeeded better than the other voles hi the class. They had known that the Good Magician was humanoid, so this study had been a necessity. If only they had also known that the Good Magician would be absent!

Meanwhile, the diggle had been considering. Diggles were not especially rapid of wit. Now it responded. "Ho, Vole!" it replied.

"Take me to your leader."

It considered again. "Where is your song?"

Oh, yes—diggles liked songs. Unfortunately, that was not Volney's strength. What should he do?

A nickelpede scrambled up behind him. His activity had attracted their attention, and now the little monsters were working up another horde.

"Song!" Volney cried in the humanoid mode. "Song, song, sooongg!"

And the diggle was satisfied. It was too slow to realize that this was not a very good song.

Volney climbed onto the diggle's cylindrical back and dug in his talons. This was necessary to hold his position; the diggle's skin was so

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thick and tough that it suffered no discomfort. "Song-song-soonngg-song!" Volney continued, getting into the swing of it.

The diggle resumed its motion, phasing through the rock and the crowding nickelpedes as if both were fog. It made a turn, orienting on the diggle leader.

Soon they were there. The leader, being old, no longer phased readily through rock, so preferred to remain in a network of physical diggings. Volney was well satisfied with this; it put him on the same footing.

"I come to ask diggle assistance for the voles," he said in voletalk.

"But the voles talk only to themselves!" the leader protested. Indeed, it was said among the digging species that the squiggles talked only to the diggles, and the diggles talked only to the voles, and the voles ignored them.

'That situation has changed slightly," Volney explained. He went on to tell of the problem in the Vale of the Vole.

"So you wish us to go and bore out new curves, to make the river friendly again."

"Exactly. The demons cannot stop you, because you are insubstantial when you bore."

The diggle leader pondered, after the fashion of his type. After an hour he replied: "We diggles have no quarrel with the demons, and would not wish to antagonize them. Therefore we shall not interfere in this business."

Disappointment smote Volney, He knew that this decision was final. "I thank you for your consideration," he said heavily.

"But perhaps the squiggles will have another attitude," the diggle said. "They are smaller than we, and move more rapidly, so their minds are more flexible. I will give you a guide so that you may seek their leader."

"I thank you for that notion," Volney replied. He had planned to ask the squiggles next anyway, but this would make it easier.

The diggle gave him a pebble. "The taste will guide you."

Volney took the pebble and put it in his mouth. He made a circle. When he faced one way, the taste became increasingly good; when he faced another, it became bad. No problem understanding this guide!

He bid parting to the diggle leader, and set off toward the good taste.

The route, to his surprise, was level rather than upward. The squiggles normally lived very close to the surface—so close that they often deposited their refuse dirt on the surface, instead of having it plug the tunnel. Deep rock wasn't their specialty, as they liked to bore with blinding speed. The light dirt and unplugged tunnels contributed to their velocity; dense hard rock inhibited them. Well, maybe there was a deep valley or

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an offshoot from the Gap Chasm that brought the surface down to this level; the squiggle leadership might indeed prefer to reside in such a secluded region.

It was growing warmer; Volney found himself panting. Surface creatures such as humanoids and centaurs had a crass way to dissipate heat: they exuded moisture from their skin, and this liquid evaporated and cooled them. This led to residues on their bodies and in their fur or clothing that built up a typical and not necessarily delightful odor. Voles, like most other creatures, did it more delicately: by sticking out their tongues and letting the breeze take the heat. However, it had to be conceded that there were times when the humanoid's allover bath of sweat might do the job better.

He paused so as to abate his body's generation of excess heat. But the heat remained; it was radiating at him from the stone. That was surprising; this was supposed to be a cool level. Where was it coming from? Surely the squiggles didn't like it this hot!

He turned away—but immediately the pebble in his mouth turned foul. That was not the direction! So he faced forward again and resumed boring.

The heat increased, and now there were rumblings in the rock whose nature he didn't trust. He had heard of volcanoes, which were great local upheavals from the heated depths; could one of those be in the vicinity? Yet why would the squiggles choose to live in such a dangerous region?

As he finally felt the pattern of an opening in the rock, the heat was almost unbearable. Just in time! He broke through and popped into a large subterranean cavern.

He paused again. There was no sign of the squiggles. The arches and chambers were entirely natural, as were the irregular grooves in the floor, which seemed to have been n.ade by the dripping of hot liquid from the ceiling. The floor was actually cooler than the ceiling; the drippings had solidified into layers of colored stone that in light would surely be rather pretty. The source of the heat was above.

Yet that was where the pebble indicated the squiggles were. When he lifted his head it turned sweet; when he sniffed the floor, it turned sour. This was strange indeed!

Well, either he accepted the validity of his guidestone, or he didn't. Volney lifted himself on his hind feet and reached up to dig into the ceiling. The stone here was relatively soft, and his talons quickly gouged out a fair-sized hole. In fact, the digging became easier as he progressed, and soon he was able to lift himself into the new hole, wedge his hind feet against the stone sides, and pull out big globs from above.

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But it was also getting hotter. Volney's tongue was lolling against his fur, inadequate; he could not remain in this environment much longer. He gave one final swoop with his talons, then slid back down; he had to cool!

The rock above sagged, then melted. A gob of it dropped. Volney barely dodged it; this stuff was molten!

He landed on the relatively cool floor, panting. More hot rock dropped from the hole, splatting against the floor. It was getting worse! Surely there could be nothing up there fit for a living creature to exist in!

Something gave way. Then lava poured out of the hole, so hot it glowed, illuminating the cavern. The layered stone was indeed pretty, the moment before it was buried under congealing lava. Volney scooted back —and the pebble hi his mouth gave him a nasty taste.

Something was definitely wrong! That pebble was guiding him into a scorching death hi a pool of molten rock! Had he not quickly retreated from the hole he was boring, he would have been fried alive—and now that he was retreating to safety, the pebble was objecting!

But the lava gave him no time to consider the implications. More of it was pouring down, hotter yet and increasingly liquid and bright. It flowed across the floor, filling a channel.

Volney decided to forget the foul taste of the pebble and retreat the way he had come. But by a most unfortunate mischance, the lava was now flowing hi a channel between him and his hole. It had cut him offl

Should he try to tunnel under it? The floor was cooler than the ceiling, so he might do this. But the way the stuff was flowing, he had no certainty that it wouldn't flow into the hole he bored and catch hull there. He couldn't risk that!

Had he been a jumping creature, like Chex Centaur, he could have hurdled it and gotten away. But he was not; that channel, narrow as it was, had become an absolute barrier to him. He would get severely burned just approaching it.

He looked back at the hole in the ceiling. It had become a fountain of lava, the fluid splattering down and spreading out along several channels like the tentacles of a glowing kraken. Soon he would be blocked off from escape in any other direction.

He hurried in the only direction he could go, past the glowing column of falling lava and down the slight incline of the floor of the cavern. There was a bright channel of lava on his right, picking its way along.

Suddenly the lava veered toward him. Volney froze, alarmed; had he not stopped, the lava would have singed his feet, for it had gone right into

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the channel he was in. Then, feeling the renewed heat of its closeness, he stepped left to get around it.

The lava flowed left, cutting him off.

Volney paused again. That was almost as if—

The lava flowed back toward him.

Volney came as close as a vole could to jumping. He lifted his front feet clear of the reaching lava and stretched to the left, then dropped his front feet and sort of hunched his rear feet into them. The lava puddled where his feet had been. A tiny patch of shed hair puffed into smoke as the molten rock touched it.

He ran on, getting around the lava. But now a new channel was converging from the left. He dodged right, and the first string of lava resumed its forward flow, about to intercept him again.

It was! The lava was actively seeking him out, trying to catch him! It was limited because it had to flow downhill or on the level, but so was he.

Volney scrambled between the converging channels and managed to get beyond just before they met. This was getting very uncomfortable!

He ran on down, but the several channels of fire paced him. They were definitely trying to trap him—and if this cavern ended, he would have no way to escape. There was no time to cut a new hole for himself, assuming he could reach a wall; there were lava lines between him and any wall he saw. If he tried to dig out through the floor, the lava would simply pour in after him. He had no further doubt of that! The ceiling—no, he could not risk thatl

He saw a flicker ahead. Oh, no—more lava! In fact, more lines of lava, coming from the other direction. He was caught between them, doomed.

Then he realized that the fire ahead was a reflection. There was water there—a subterranean lake. It filled a depression in this part of the cavern, and bubbled gently.

And Volney couldn't swim.

He came to the lip of it and dipped a paw. The water was pleasantly cool; the bubbling was from air coming up through it, not from boiling. It wasn't deep; the light of the lava shone right through, showing that this was really only a large puddle. He could just about wade through it, if he had to.

The lava poured down, twin tentacles stretching forth to hiss against the lake to his left and right. Now he had no choice; he had to wade!

He waded in, and the lava did not. It didn't like the water, and drew back angrily at the brink, hardening. He felt the bubbles passing up around his body, innocently tickling him. Reprieve at last!

Then the light brightened. Volney looked back and saw with horror

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that a huge sheet of lava was sliding down behind him. It intended to press right on through the lake, boiling it away, so that it could finally nail its prey! He had to get beyond!

But he could not. Already streamers of lava were flowing around the lake to either side, enclosing it. Volney tried to wade faster, but saw that he was too slow; by the time he crossed, the lava would meet itself at the far side, and the escape route would be gone. If only he could swim, then he could move rapidly enough through the water!

He tried, splashing valiantly, but only succeeded in causing an enraged hissing at the rim as the splashes landed. It was no good; he could not make sufficient progress. He had lost this race.

He looked up. That was worse; not only was the ceiling out of his reach here, it was beginning to glow on its own. That meant that the main mass of this molten monster was closing in from its horrendous pool, ready to melt through and drop directly on him.

Was there no escape? Above and around was doom; below was water. He would drown if he tried to hide under the surface; he would burn if he did not.

But there was one chance. Volney didn't even pause to consider how well it might work; since it was his only course, he plunged in.

Literally. He took a breath and ducked below the water. One of the reasons he couldn't swim was that he was too dense to float; his feet were always on the bottom. Voles had to be dense, in order to bore through rock. Now this property of his body served him well; he was able to dig in the bottom much as if he were digging into dry ground. He scooped out the muck and soon encountered the firm stone below; this pond was a mere puddle, an accumulation at a low spot.

But the bubbles were still coming up. The stone was porous, and water and air extended down into it. That was now important.

He did as much as he could on one breath, then flipped over and poked his head out of the water. The ring of fire was flaring higher, and the ceiling was glowing; not much time remained! Volney took another breath and ducked down again.

He bored down farther, stirring up muck so that the water was cloudy; it was fortunate that he required only the sensation of touch, not vision. He got as far as he could, then shot up again for more air.

This continued breath by breath. The hole deepened rapidly, but the

deadly lava loomed closer. The edge of the pool was hissing steadily as

the lava encroached, destroying it in steam; soon the lava would make its

major move and overwhelm the pond entirely.

Volney dug as deep as he could, then curved his tunnel, as he had

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when leaving the circle for the nickelpedes. He dug horizontally, then slanted up. It was getting harder to make progress on a breath, because of the time it took him to crawl along. But if this worked—

It worked. The bubbling air was catching in the upper part of the new tunnel, forming a bubble rather than pushing on through the rock right away. Air, like water, generally took the easiest course. Each time Volney returned, there was a larger bubble, until at last it was large enough for him to fit his snout into and breathe. Now he no longer had to retreat all the way to the surface of the pond; he could recharge right here.

That was just as well, because at last the lava was striking. There was such a horrendous hissing that he heard it right through the rock. He could no longer go back there.

Volney continued his boring, operating from his new base. The work was faster, now, because of his closer air supply. He had a lot of work to do, yet, and he was not yet safe from the lava, but he knew that the corner had been turned; he was on his way to escape.

Now he pondered the matter of the guide pebble. It had led him exactly wrong! How could that be?

Had the diggle leader betrayed him and sent him to his death in the riving lava? He found that hard to accept; diggles were slow but honest, if only because the complexities of deception were too much for them to manage. This pebble was an example: a diggle could not understand intricate directions, and would inevitably get lost if it depended on instructions. But the pebbles were easy to understand: just proceed toward the good taste. Even the most worm-witted diggle could follow that system. When it got where it was going, it could take a new pebble that would guide it to the new destination. The smarter diggles would see to the distribution of the pebbles, thus directing traffic. The diggle leader had done for Volney what it did for its own kind: given him a pebble oriented on his particular destination.

How, then, could it have directed him so badly? He really needed to understand, because he wanted no more encounters with lava flows! Was it a bad stone? Yet it seemed to be working well, just wrong. It had guided him to doom, not to his destination. To the very place diggles as well as voles should avoid at all costs.

The pebble must be operating in reverse! It must have sweetened on the forbidden region and soured on the proper one. Yet why should this be?

He considered and concluded that he must have run afoul of a difference in taste. Diggles were wormlike, and their idea of a feast was a vein of coal. Voles were more like the surface creatures, and they preferred sweet foods. So to a diggle, bitter or sour might be positive, while sweet

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could represent spoilage. The pebble had been warning him with an ever-sweeter taste that he was going wrong, but he had misunderstood.

What a difference taste could make! This minor distinction between diggles and voles had very nearly killed him.

Volney oriented on the bad taste. It was an awful experience, but he was glad to do it; now at last he was going right. He hoped.

Soon enough he arrived at the squiggle headquarters. Here the creatures were as much smaller than he as the diggles had been larger. They were correspondingly more alert. He did not have to wait for one to come along; they tunneled out to meet him. "What brings you here, O volish one?" they inquired, quivering their whiskers expectantly at him.

Volney explained that he was seeking help for the Vale of the Vole. Their leader was apologetic, but explained that though he personally would like to help, he hardly knew how; and that there were elements among them that thought that it was high time the lordly voles were brought down to smaller tunnels. He was the soul of discretion, but it was evident that there was considerable resentment of the voles, historically, by those who had had to yield the best pastures to them, and that history extended into the present. Thus the squiggles probably would not have helped, had they had the ability to. Volney really couldn't blame them.

However, the squiggles said, they would be happy to give him a pebble to guide him to the nearest wiggle, who happened to be a female in quest of a mate. Volney demurred; voles had no truck with wiggles! Take the pebble anyway, they urged, in case he changed his mind. So Volney, avoiding rudeness, accepted the pebble and put it in his travel pouch.

Then, with heavy gizzard because of his failure to find help, Volney bored toward the surface.

He broke ground some distance from his starting place, deep in the surface jungle, and changed to his surface suit and eyes. Because he had a good sense of direction, he knew where Castle Roogna was. He did not really enjoy pottering along on the surface, but it was faster than tunneling, and he did not have a great deal of time left; his nether excursions had taken most of his week.

He reached the agreed rendezvous spot in the orchard on schedule. Chex was already there, and so was little Ivy, who it seemed was always to be found where things were happening. "Here'ss Volney!" Ivy cried gladly, running up to give him a hug. He wasn't sure how she managed that, but she did.

"Where's Esk?" he asked.

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Chex spread her hands. "There hass been no ssign of him," she said with the hiss of the surface folk. "But I'm ssure he'ss on the way."

They exchanged stories of their searches. Volney was amazed to learn that she had not only entered the gourd, but had done so physically. "I did not think that was possible," he remarked.

"Oh, ssure," Ivy said eagerly. "I've done it! I had a night mare sshoe that let me go in, and I came out at the Good Magician'ss casstle, but I losst it."

"Lost the castle?" Volney asked, startled.

"The mare sshoe, dummy! Too bad, 'causse it'ss ssort of interesting in the gourd, if you can sstand the icky sstuff like the bug housse and the lake of casstor oil. There'ss a garden of candy, and—"

"That sshould be no horror to you!" Chex exclaimed.

"Well it wass, 'causse I think if I ate any, I'd maybe get caught forever in there, so I had to pass it by, and that was the awfullesst thing I ever did!"

Chex smiled understanding^. 'The gourd iss the repossitory of bad dreamss," she reminded Ivy.

"Yeah." Then, as Chex began to speak: "Yess!" And a giggle.

Time passed, but Esk did not return. Now the tune for rendezvous was past, and they were getting alarmed. "If ssomething happened—not that anything could have!" Chex said nervously.

"Yes," Volney agreed as nervously.

"We might go out to meet him if he'ss a little late."

"Where?" For Esk could have taken any route to Lake Ogre-Chobee and any route back; they had virtually no chance of intercepting him.

Then an old woman staggered up. "Ah, a winged ccentaur and an exxtinct vole!" she exclaimed. "You musst be Essk'ss friendss!"

"We are!" the three of them chorused.

"I am Latia, of the cursse fiendss. I curssed him, without meaning to, and now he'ss losst. I looked all over, but could not find him, sso finally I came here, hoping that you would know how to locate him."

Volney looked at Chex. Esk—lost!

"There'ss a finder sspell in the arssenal!" Ivy exclaimed. "I'll get it for you!"

Volney relaxed. Maybe it would be all right after all.

Chapter 9. Gourd

C/sk found himself in a tangled mixture of glade and jungle that was strange in ways he could not quite fathom. About one thing he was not confused: he was in the world of the gourd. He had never been here before, but his father had warned him about it. When a person looked into the peephole, his spirit entered the gourd, and could not escape it until some other person came and broke his line of sight. If no one came, he would remain indefinitely, and his body would slowly starve. According to Smash, it could be a lot of fun in the gourd. But Smash was half ogre, and what an ogre thought was fun was not necessarily what Esk

would.

He had been smitten by the curse, and fallen in a sink, and landed against a gourd. That meant that Latia would have trouble finding him— and might fail. Since her curse really had been a curse instead of a blessing, and it was by her own estimate a singularly potent one, it meant she probably would fail. He was in deep trouble.

Could he escape on his own? He struggled to remember what else Smash had said about the gourd. It was the home of the night mares, who were the couriers of bad dreams; the mares delivered them to deserving sleepers, and could pass freely in and out. No other creature could, except by means of the peephole.

Well, perhaps he could find a night mare and ask her to help him. If she went out and put a dream in Latia's head that showed exactly where he was, then the old woman could locate him. This would take time, but at least it was a chance.

It seemed to him that there was some terrible price that a mare required for such assistance, though. What was it? He couldn't remember. Well, he would find out in due course.

Where could he find a night mare? Smash had said something about a pasture where they grazed, somewhere beyond a haunted house and a city of moving buildings where the brassies lived. Esk didn't know what a

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brassy might be, but hoped he would recognize it if he saw it. So he would start looking for those things.

Now he examined his environment more closely. He perceived an assortment of paths, all tangled together like a helping of spaghetti. Did one of them lead to the haunted house, or the brassies, or the night mares?

There was one way to find out. He set foot on the clearest path and walked along it. The tangled terrain seemed to retreat slightly, reorienting to accommodate the perspective of the path he had chosen.

But Esk was cautious. He distrusted, as a matter of principle, any path that was too easy, because that was exactly the kind that could lead to a ...

And there it was: a tangle tree. Just as he had feared.

Esk backed off—and discovered that this was a one-way path. It was clear and open ahead, and did not exist behind; the brush had closed in, girt with glistening thorns and slime-coated leaves. In normal Xanth such foliage would be dangerous; here in the gourd it was surely worse.

He hesitated. Certainly he did not wish to go forward into the tangler, but he couldn't go back, and the sides looked no more inviting.

The tangle tree had no such concern. Already it was reaching for him with its tentacles. They were stout and green and moved with a dismaying sinuousness; this was the largest and most aggressive tangle tree he had encountered, the stuff of a bad dream.

A bad dream! Of course! The gourd was the repository of horrible dreams. The night mares surely came here to pick up the dreams of tanglers, which they then carried to the Xanthside sleepers. Dreams, like other forms of art, required effective original models.

Maybe this would be a good place to stay, so that when a mare came, he could ask her to take his message.

The first tentacle reached for his face. Esk ducked, but it pursued him. The tip of it caught in his hair and coiled it tight, drawing him up.

Esk drew his hunting knife. He reached up and sliced off the tip of the tentacle, freeing his hair.

Green goo spurted from the severed tentacle. "Ooo!" the tree groaned. Then, wrathfully, it intensified its effort. Six more tentacles swooped in.

Esk knew he couldn't fight all these off with his knife. So he ducked under and ran in the direction that surprised the tree: straight down the path toward it. Behind him the path dissolved and the jungle closed in— just in time to get grabbed by the tentacles that had aimed at Esk.

Suddenly the tangler was in a struggle with the thorn vines and poison slime leaves. Horror against horror! Esk ran on, directly into the embrace

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of the tree, while the tree was distracted by the outside action. Tanglers, like most vegetation, were not unduly bright; once launched into a grab, they tended to fight it through without regard to the nature of what they had grabbed.

The path led right to the huge wooden maw of the tree, which was now grimacing with concentration. Above it was a bole that opened into a giant eye. Normal tanglers did not have eyes, as far as he knew, but this was no normal plant; this was a bad dream. Esk stopped, hoping the eye would not spy him.

There was the sound of tearing. The tentacles ripped out the thorn and slime plants by their pallid roots and hauled them into the wooden orifice. The tree took a big bite—and of course got a mouthful of thorn and slime.

Now was as good a time as any to sneak away. Esk sheathed his knife and started out on another path, one of several that led in to the tree. But the moment his foot touched it, it vanished. These were all one way: in. How could he get out?

He would have to use his magic. He chose another path, and as his foot came down on it, he murmured "no." This balked the path's natural inclination, and it remained as it was. Esk had not thought to use his talent quite this way before, and hadn't been sure it would work in the gourd; he was now reassured.

The path gradually diminished as it got farther from the tree, and finally petered out amidst a confusion that was similar or identical to the one he had started at. He had accomplished next to nothing, apart from ascertaining that the easiest path was not necessarily the best.

He looked at the other paths that now offered. They couldn't all lead to tangle trees, because tanglers were notoriously isolationist; they reserved hunting territories and resisted encroachment by others of their kind.

He shrugged and stepped across to the best looking of the other paths. It couldn't lead to a worse evil than the last!

Again the surroundings reformulated to accommodate the new perspective, and it seemed that this was the only natural path for any person to take. But Esk was more cautious than before. He turned around and followed it back the way he had come. It did not vanish; it was a two-way path. Good. He turned again and proceeded in his original direction.

Soon enough he discovered its bad dream. This was a monstrous (of course!) kraken, the nefarious seaweed monster that snared unwary swimmers. But this one was swimming in the air above the path. Its

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tentacles were just as long and sinuous as those of the tangle tree, and had saucer-shaped suckers.

Even as he spied it, it spied him. It floated toward him, tentacles reaching.

Esk drew his knife again, knowing that this was hardly a threat to a creature such as this. He ran along the path, knowing that escape would not be feasible either. He was correct on both counts; the kraken paced him without seeming effort, its tentacles extending toward him in a leisurely manner. It knew it had him; it was supremely unworried about his effort either to fight or to escape.

He could tell it no, of course. But Esk was annoyed by these trouble-leading paths, and now that annoyance burst into anger.

As the tentacles touched him, he sheathed his knife and tackled them bare-handed. His ogre strength manifested. He caught one tentacle and squeezed it and its sucker to a painful pulp; he caught another and yanked violently.

The kraken reacted as had the tree, keening in momentary pain, then throwing half a dozen more tentacles into the fray. This time Esk did not avoid them; he grabbed them and tied them into knots. He knew he was talcing out his private frustration on a weed that was only trying to do its job, but his ogre nature didn't care. Nothing in its right mind messed with an ogre!

Very soon, the kraken had had enough; the bad dream had turned on it. It jerked away and fled, leaving Esk in command of the path.

He relaxed, feeling a bit guilty. He should have told the weed no, and passed on unmolested. He should not have taken out his frustration at being trapped in the world of the gourd on a relatively innocent creature.

Soon he came to the end of the path. It simply stopped, and the mess of thorns and poison slime resumed. So he reversed, and followed it to its other end—which terminated similarly. This was a path that went nowhere; it was simply the kraken's run. Again, he had gained nothing.

Well, there were other paths. He walked back toward the center of the limited one he was on, casting his gaze about until he saw another that departed at right angles. He found a stick and used it to push the thorns and slimes to one side, and stepped carefully across.

The perspective shifted again, centering on the new path; the one he had just left was now almost invisible, and what he could see of it seemed twisted, while it had been fairly straight before. The floating kraken was nowhere to be seen. This was certainly a deceptive region!

This present path wound pleasantly around and down, following a

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contour he had not noted before. Soon it presented a clear spring, whose water sparkled without moving.

If Esk had not known that this was the region of bad dreams, his experiences with the other two paths would have warned him. He did not trust this water at all! Obviously the traveler was intended to drink from it. What was the trap? What could be so bad about it that it was part of the source region for sleeping horrors?

He heard a commotion. Something was coming down the path. He stepped carefully off it, avoiding the big thorns, and made himself as inconspicuous as he could.

It was a desperate bunny, fleeing a gross, slavering wolf. The bunny hopped down the path, its soft pink ears thrown back by the wind of its velocity, its little nose quivering. The wolf charged straight after, fangs

bared.

Esk would have stopped the wolf's pursuit by telling it no, but the pair was moving so fast that both animals were by him before he worked up the thought. He simply had to watch as the bunny made it to the spring and leaped in, barely avoiding the wolf, who screeched to a halt at its brink. Apparently bad-dream wolves did not like water, so the bunny was

safe.

But the bunny, having plunged into the water, suffered a transformation. Its appearance didn't really change, but its aspect did. It emitted a peculiar keening growl, then swam purposefully toward the waiting wolf, who seemed hardly to believe its luck. The crazy bunny was returning to its jaws!

The bunny scrambled to shore and shook itself. It growled again, and its eyes blazed red. It bared its teeth. Then it leaped on the wolf, who was so surprised it didn't move. The bunny's teeth snapped closed on one of the wolf's ears, and its two feet thumped hard against the wolf's nose.

The bunny was savagely attacking the wolf! The wolf, amazed, leaped back. The ear tore free of the bunny's teeth, leaving a splatter of blood. The bunny leaped again, toward thewolf, teeth snapping.

The wolf should have been able to dispatch the bunny, but its confusion was such that it turned tail and fled, the bunny pursuing.

Esk watched, as amazed as the wolf. What was in that water?

The bunny's nose wiggled. The creature paused, winding Esk. It stopped, turning toward him. It growled again, and its eyes ignited. It leaped.

"No!" Esk cried.

The bunny was in midair so could not change course, but it did change its mind. Instead of biting Esk, it simply landed against his chest and

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immediately jumped off. Then it resumed its progress up the path, following the wolf.

Esk looked at the spring. There was only one thing he could think of to account for what he had seen. He knew of love springs, that caused any creature drinking them to fall violently in love with the next creature of the opposite sex it encountered. It was understood that the most prominent crossbreeds had arisen because of the intercession of love springs: centaurs, harpies, merfolk and so on. But here in this realm of bad dreams, this must be the opposite: a hate spring. Thus the bunny had imbibed, and been filled with such hate that it had lost all fear of the wolf. It had hated Esk, too. It was no longer gentle and frightened; now it was vicious and bold. Its personality had changed radically.

Esk concluded that he did not want to drink from that spring. He walked slowly back along the path, seeking some other route.

He had tried three obvious, well-formed paths, and each had led him to mischief. It was time to change his approach. What about a hidden, devious path?

He almost missed it. The path was so inconspicuous that it was virtually lost in the tangle. It might not be a path at all. But he decided to try it. He stepped carefully across.

Once more the perspective shifted, and the path became more evident. But it was in poor repair, and was so convoluted as to seem to make loops in places. Brush overhung it, and stones intruded on it; he had to watch his step, every step. Was it worth it?

He decided that it was. After all, if nothing had used this path recently, then it probably was not being maintained by some monster for a bad dream. Its very difficulty made it safer. He proceeded with improving confidence.

Then, abruptly, he encountered a human skeleton. It lay athwart the path, its skull on one side, its leg bones on the other. There was no flesh remaining on it at all.

Esk sighed. "Obviously this path is not safe either," he said. "This poor fellow—" He touched a hipbone with the toe of his boot.

The skeleton stirred. Esk leaped back, though he knew that he had probably just caused the bones to shift and collapse. After all, bones could not move on their own!

The skeleton twisted around and sat up.

Esk retreated farther. It was moving/

The skeleton got to its feet, somewhat unsteadily.

"All right!" Esk exclaimed. "I'll vacate your pathl I don't need to fight another bad dream!"

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The skull turned on the neck bones, and the hollow eye sockets oriented on him. "You found me?" the toothy jawbone asked.

"I found you, and now I'll leave you," Esk agreed. "Really, I'm not looking for trouble, just for a way out of here. No need to chase me."

"Please, keep me," the skeleton said. Its lower jaw moved as it spoke. Esk wasn't sure how it could speak with no flesh to guide the air, but it

did.

"Keep you?" Esk asked blankly. "What for?"

"So I will no longer be lost."

"You are lost? I thought you were dead!"

"No, I'm lost," the skeleton said firmly. "This is the Lost Path."

"How can a path be lost?"

"When no one finds it," the skeleton said. "Please, I must find my way back to the Haunted Garden, but I cannot unlose myself. Take me by the hand and help me be found."

Esk's initial horror of the skeleton was fading. After all, this was the place of bad dreams, and the skeleton was no worse than others. "But I'm lost too."

"No, I can see you are of mortal vintage. You must be peeping."

"Uh, yes," Esk agreed. "I fell, and my eye came up against a hypnogourd. I'm trying to find a night mare so she can take a message out, so that my line of sight can be broken. But until then, I'm stuck

here."

"Yes, you are only temporarily mislaid. But I am properly lost. Therefore I must plead for your help; if you do not unlose me, I may never recover my station."

"Your station?"

"I am part of the skeletal set, adjacent to the Haunted House. Some horrendous ogre came through and—"

"That was my father!" Esk exclaimed, remembering what Smash had

said. The skeleton drew away from him with alarm. "Oh, no! I thought you

might be a rescuer!"

"Wait, skeleton," Esk said quickly. "I suppose if my father was the cause of your getting lost, I should try to get you found. What's your

name?"

"Marrow," the skeleton said.

"My name's Esk." Then, somewhat awkwardly, he extended his hand.

The skeleton took it. "Oh, thank you, Esk! I will make it up to you! I am lost, but I do know something of the environs. If there is any way I can be of assistance . . ."

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"I think you have already helped me," Esk said, disengaging from the bones of the hand as quickly as he could do so without affront. "I was looking for the haunted, uh, set, because my father mentioned it; if I can find that, maybe I can follow his route to the pasture of the night mares."

"That certainly might be true!" Marrow said with bony enthusiasm. "I cannot tell you the way because I am lost, but I can tell you anything else about it, and I'm sure my associates will have information."

"Good; let's get going."

But the skeleton hung back. "You must take my hand; I can not unlose myself."

"Oh." Esk took the hand again, realizing that he had to follow the strange rules of this place. Actually, the bones were firm and dry, not slimy as he had feared. "Do you know the proper direction?"

"Alas, no," Marrow said. "When that ogre started throwing bones— no offense intended—I fled, and I lost track of location. I tried to find my way back, but somehow I had stumbled onto this path, and that was it. I have remained lost ever since. Finally I just lay down to rest my weary bones, so to speak, and then you came."

"But once you were on the path, it wasn't lost any more," Esk said. "So you should have been able to find your way out."

"Not so. Once I was on it, I became part of it, because I did not find it; I merely stumbled on it."

"I'm not sure I did much better. I tried three other paths, and all were bad, so then I looked for a different kind—"

"And found it!" Marrow exclaimed. "So you are not lost. Even though you cannot directly escape this world, you can find your way from this path."

"Are you sure of that?"

"No," Marrow confessed.

Esk shrugged. The thesis made as much sense as anything else, and it was more encouraging to believe in the chance of escape than in the lack of any chance.

The jungle thinned, becoming more like a forest. That was a relief; Esk felt more at home in forest. Perhaps he was finding the way out. If he returned Marrow to the garden of the walking skeletons, and if one of the others did know the way to the pasture of the night mares—

Something bounded away, startling him. It looked like a mundane deer, but it was bright red. "What was that?"

"Only a roe," Marrow said. "Didn't you see the color?"

"Yes. That's why I couldn't be sure what it was."

"Roes are red," Marrow said. "I thought everyone knew that."

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**I happen to be a stranger here," Esk said somewhat shortly.

They came to a potted plant. It was bright blue, and had knobs on the ends of its stems. As they approached, it lifted the knobs menacingly; obviously it intended to punch at anyone who came too close. "What is that?"

"A violent," Marrow said. "Didn't you note the color?"

"Oh, I see," Esk said, irritated. "Roes are red, violents are blue."

"I think he's got it!" Marrow exclaimed.

"Just who are you talking to?"

"The violent, of course. Didn't you hear?"

"I guess I don't speak the local dialect. What does it say?*'

"It says it isn't its fault it got lost. They were planting violents on the median strips between major paths, but they rejected this one and threw it away."

Esk began to have some sympathy for the blue plant. "Why did they

reject it?"

"Because they didn't want any more violents on the media."

"Oh." He should have known that no explanation would make much

sense here.

They continued along the path. In due course they had to pass under a kind of woven vine that seemed to have eyeballs set into it. "Say, isn't that an eye queue?" Esk asked. "My father encountered one of those; it made him very smart for a while. What's it doing here?"

"Maybe I can find out," Marrow said. He reached out, caught the vine, and set it on the top of his skull. "It says it was lost from the Lexicon," he reported.

"The Lexicon? What's that?"

"The eye queue says that some ass from Mundania came through with a secretary and listed all the things of Xanth—except the eye queue vine. So the vine is lost."

'Too bad," Esk said. "Now nobody will be smart."

Marrow stepped out from under the vine, and it fell back into place over the path. Apparently it could not become a part of the skull, probably because there was no brain to enhance.

Farther along was a little squiggly thing, hardly large enough to see. "What's that?" Esk asked.

"A lost vitamin, I think. Let me see." Marrow put out a finger bone to touch the thing. "Yes, vitamin F."

"What's it for?"

"Oh, it has potent F-ect."

"Potent effect?"

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"F you make the right F-ort."

"Let's find vitamin X instead," Esk said grimly. "Then maybe we can become X-pert in finding the X-it, if it X-ists."

"X-actly," Marrow agreed, not catching Esk's irony.

They continued past other lost items: a lost fossil bone that Marrow greatly admired, as it was of a species of creature unknown in Xanth or Mundania, whose discovery would revolutionize the understanding of both; a lost band of the rainbow, more wonderful than any other; a lost stream of consciousness; and a lost dire strait. Esk would have found all these things considerably more interesting if he hadn't been so acutely concerned about finding his way out of the gourd before his body got into trouble in Xanth. Suppose a dragon sniffed it out? He could wake up to find himself chomped.

Then they came to a young woman sitting in a bath. She was of metallic hue, and quite nicely proportioned. Esk could tell because her only clothing seemed to be a metallic halter covering her front.

She jumped up as they approached. "Oh, good!" she exclaimed. "Found at last!"

"Uh, hello," Esk said, trying to keep his eyes above the level of her chest. He knew that Chex Centaur would have called his attitude foolish, but the attitude was one of the things that had not gotten lost. "I am Esk, and this is Marrow."

"Hello, Esk and Marrow," she said brightly. "I'm Bria Brassie."

"You're a brassy!" Esk exclaimed.

'That's brassie," she corrected him. "I'm female, as you evidently hadn't noticed. A male is brassy."

"Oh. Sorry. I, uh, noticed, but—"

"That's not much of an apology," she muttered.

Esk plowed on. "I've been looking for you!"

"Well, you have found me. Have we met before?" She gave her brass hair a shake so that it glinted prettily.

"I mean, I was looking for where you live, because I think that's near the night mares* pasture! Do you know where—?"

"No, I'm hopelessly lost. I thought you knew. Didn't you come to get me out of here?"

"I came by accident," Esk admitted, glancing down, then wrenching his eyes up again. That wasn't much better, because her bosom was full and her brassiere was scanty.

"He's a peeper," Marrow explained.

Esk felt himself starting to flush, though he knew that the skeleton was referring to the gourd, not what Esk was trying not to stare at. "Yes,

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yes," he said quickly. "I fell, and landed against a gourd before I knew, and now I'm stuck here." He swung his gaze around, to indicate the surroundings.

"Are you having trouble with your eyes?" Bria inquired.

"Uh, some, maybe. Do you have any information about the terrain? Anything that might help us get, er, unlost?"

She turned, looking away from him. In the process she showed her pert brass bottom, that flexed exactly as if made of living flesh. "I'm afraid I don't. I like to explore, and was seeking a way to visit the outer world, but as you can see, I got lost." She completed her turn, and Esk hauled his eyes up once again. "Are you sure you're well?" she asked solicitously. "You seem flushed, which I understand is a signal of distress among living folk."

"Uh, yes, I am distressed," Esk agreed quickly. "My body is stuck in that pit, and I'm very much concerned that something will happen to it before I get rescued. If I can just get to a night mare—"

"Yes, it must be quite a problem, being alive," Bria said. "Is it true that you have to eat and eliminate, just to keep going?"

"Brassies don't?"

"Of course not. Why bother with all that inconvenience and mess if you don't have to? I suppose you have to wear all that clumsy clothing to keep you warm, too."

"You shouldn't embarrass him by remarking on his weaknesses of the flesh," Marrow reproved her.

"Oh, that's right," she agreed. "I apologize, Esk." She stepped into him, put her arms around him, and kissed him on the mouth. "Is that enough?"

Stunned, Esk just stood there, for the moment as still as a metal statue himself.

"It seems it is not," Marrow said.

"I'll just have to try harder, then," she said brightly. "Esk, I apologize for anything I may have said to offend or embarrass you, and hope you will forgive me that transgression." Then she embraced him so closely that he started to lose his balance and made an involuntary grab for support, reaching around her. Then she kissed him again, deep and long. She was made of metal, but her lips were warm and soft and firm, and so was her body.

Finally she drew back her head a little. "Is that enough?" she asked again.

Esk felt as if he were floating at treetop height. All that anchored him

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was his grip on her body. Then a mound flexed under his hand, and he realized where that grip was. He froze again.

"Apparently you are not putting enough into it," Marrow said.

Bria made a cute little grimace. "Apparently not. Well, I'll make sure it takes the next time." She inhaled, preparing for the supreme effort.

"No-no!" Esk stammered. "I-I—I accept your a-apology!"

She cocked her head at him, and her hair shifted with a coppery sheen. "Are you sure? You still look flushed."

"Ab-absolutely sure," he said uncertainly.

"That's a relief. Be sure to tell me if I embarrass you again."

"Uh, yes, certainly," he agreed, as she disengaged, and his hand finally slipped from her buttock.

"Apologizing is such a chore," Marrow said. "I don't know whether it is worse for the offender or the offendee."

Now it was not just his gaze, but his fancy that had to be sternly reined. Esk's experience with women was quite limited, but he was discovering that the nuances of such interaction could carry a formidable charge. He had met Bria only a few minutes ago, but already she had opened a dramatic new dimension to his imagination.

"We had better just walk along the path," Bria said. "Since Esk is not part of our world, he should be able to unlose us, if we maintain contact with him."

"My sentiment exactly," Marrow said.

Bria took Esk's right hand and Marrow his left, and they walked on along the path, which was wide enough at this stage to accommodate them in this formation. Esk suffered himself to be guided, for his thoughts were not properly on the subject. How could a creature of metal be so soft?

The oath jigged and jogged, becoming narrow and then wide again, but they maintained their linkage and advanced resolutely along it.

Bria spied something in the path, perhaps a tiny pebble, and bent quickly to pick it up with her free hand. "Just what I've always wanted!" she exclaimed.

"Oh? What is it?" Esk asked.

She glanced sidelong at him. "Nothing of consequence, perhaps. Just another lost item I think I'll save, just in case I should one day need it."

Esk shrugged. Of course she could pick up anything she wanted. A stone as small as that was hardly worth the eifort, though.

The scenery was changing, so they knew they were getting somewhere. Now they seemed to be approaching a region of more orderly plants, that—

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Light flared, interrupting his observation in mid thought. "Oh, I'm so glad we found you in time!" Chex exclaimed. "Are you all right, EskT

"What'v thiv?" Volney asked.

"A bare-bottomed hussy!" Latia exclaimed. "And a bundle of bones!"

Esk snapped alert. "Don't say anything embarrassing!" he cried. "These are my acquaintances in the gourd!" For Marrow and Bria were with him, still holding his hands.

"That's right," Chex said. "Whatever a visitor to the world of the gourd is in contact with when he departs it, accompanies him. These are gourd folk."

The skeleton and the brassie seemed dazed now. It was Esk's turn to take charge. "On my right hand is Bria Brassie," he said. "On my left, Marrow Bones. They wereon the Lost Path. Bria and Marrow, these are my friends in Xanth normal: Chex Centaur, Volney Vole, and Latia Curse Fiend."

The several named parties nodded in turn. Then Chex assessed the situation. "I believe we can return Marrow and Bria to their own world. Esk, you have simply to hold their hands and look into the peephole; then, inside, release them, and we shall break your eye contact so that you return alone."

"And where will that leave us?" Bria demanded indignantly. "On the Lost Path—where we can't escape?"

"But this is not your world," Chex protested. "Everything is different here."

"I wanted to explore this world anyway," Bria said.

Marrow shrugged. "I think I am no more lost here than I was on the Lost Path. At such time as some one of you peeks in a gourd and locates the Haunted Garden, you can return me there directly."

"But the gourd is locked onto the same scene," Chex said. "Each time Esk peeps, he will find himself exactly where he was before."

"Agreed," Marrow said. "But you others will have different scenes, and perhaps one of them will be the one I require."

Chex nodded agreement. "Yes, we can do that now. Ordinarily I would not voluntarily look into a hypnogourd, but this seems to be a constructive exception." She reached down and picked up the gourd. "Free me after only a moment, please," she said, and put her eye to the peephole.

She froze in place. Esk disengaged from Bria and Marrow, and put his hand over the peephole, interrupting Chex's vision.

The centaur resumed animation. "I was in a region of paper objects," she said. "Some exceedingly elaborate constructions; I had no idea that paper could achieve such configurations!"

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"Wrong set," Esk said. He took the gourd and held it down for Volney.

The Vole looked, and froze. Then Esk covered the peephole, and Volney returned to life. "An endlew vheet of fluid," he reported. "Very pretty, but I think not correct for theve folk."

Esk held the gourd up for Latia. She looked, and froze; then, when Esk broke the line of sight, she grimaced. "A great wide plain, with black equine shapes on the horizon," she said.

"The pasture of the night mares!" Esk exclaimed. "Just what I was looking for—but no longer need!"

"It seems that we cannot help these visitors at the moment," Chex said. "Perhaps if they do not mind remaining with us for a time, we can find some other person whose gourd orientation is more relevant."

"That's fine," Bria said. "I shall be happy to spend some time here."

"But you will have to dress decently," Latia said.

"What?"

"Different conventions!" Esk said quickly to Bria. "She only means that here it will be better if you wear a dress."

"That's right," Marrow said. "You do wear clothing here."

"I don't," Chex said.

"Humanoids wear clothing, mostly," Esk said.

"I suppose we shouldn't embarrass the world we visit," Bria said reluctantly.

"There is a broadcloth tree close by," Latia said. "I can readily make you clothing from that." She glanced at Marrow. "And if I can find some herringbone material, that should do nicely for you." Latia set off for the fabric, trailed by the two from the gourd.

"Broadcloth and herringbone," Chex murmured. "She has a special sense of alignment."

"The curse fiends are very conscious of the proprieties," Esk agreed. "I gather she rendezvoused with you and Volney, and then Volney sniffed me out?"

"Exactly. We did not realize that you would return with company, but perhaps it is for the best. I gather you were unsuccessful in your quest for a solution to the problem of the Kiss-Mee River?"

"Unfortunately, yes. But I can still ask the ogres for help."

"We must eat and compare notes," she said, "then decide what to do in the morning."

"Yes. I am eager to hear how the two of you fared." Indeed, he was glad to be back with familiar company. But still his mind kept flirting with the experience he had had with Bria's mode of apology. He had

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returned from the gourd, his body intact, but his mind had hardly settled yet. He wished he could talk to someone about that.

"She seems like a nice enough girl, and quite well formed," Chex remarked, as if reading his mind. "But she is not of your world, Esk."

Chapter 10. Cheiron

\_^hex trotted south, carrying Marrow on her back. She was headed for her sire's region, and the skeleton would not have been able to keep up afoot.

Actually, Marrow did not look like a skeleton now. Latia had worked up an effective suit of herringbone cloth, and picked him a pair of stout slippers and a pair of thick gloves that extended well up past his wrists. He looked very much like a living man, except for his skull, and even that could be masked by the hat and scarf. Fortunately he did not weigh very much, even bundled up like this, because he was all bone.

They had discussed it the prior night, after exchanging stories of recent adventures. They had decided to distribute the new additions to the group among the original members, with the fiend woman and brass girl accompanying Esk, and the skeleton accompanying Chex. The vole was tunneling alone, again; it was too difficult for any of the others to keep pace with him deep underground. Perhaps this time they would be able to obtain some more solid commitment of assistance. They would meet in seven days, as before, and see where they stood. One way or another, they intended to rescue the Kiss-Mee River from its unhappy plight.

It was possible that Marrow would not remain with her long, for they had agreed to ask any other folk they met to look in a gourd, and to conduct Marrow there if either the horror house or the haunted garden were found, because the two were adjacent. Meanwhile, she was happy to talk with him, because like all centaurs she was curious about anything that was out of the ordinary.

"How is it that you hold together without flesh or tendons?" she inquired.

"That is the nature of skeletal magic," he explained. "The toe bone is connected to the foot bone, and the foot bone is connected to the ankle bone, and the ankle bone is connected to the leg bone—"

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"I grasp the connection," she cut in wryly. "I suppose it is that same magic that animates you?"

"Of course. Just as the magic of life animates your flesh. Doesn't it become quite hot in there, with such a ponderous mass of flesh encasing you?"

"We have become acclimatized to it," she said with a private smile. "How is that you are able to speak, when you have no lungs, no throat, no mouth?"

"It is just part of the magic. Certain motions of the jaw produce certain sounds, and we learn to control these when young, until we become proficient. The full process takes several years, but we consider it part of the art of growing up."

"Of growing up? You mean, there are child skeletons too?"

"Of course. Did you suppose we were fashioned whole from air?"

"I thought you were the remains of formerly living folk."

'The remains of living folk? What an appalling notion!"

"No offense was intended, Marrow," she said quickly.

"We of the outer world don't have much direct contact with you of the gourd, so are ignorant about many things. I apologize if—"

"No apology required," he said quickly. "Of course you did not know; that is why you asked."

Chex remembered something that Esk had mentioned in passing. "About apology—is it true that your kind does it by kissing?"

"Of course notl Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Perhaps I misconstrued a reference. Esk said something about the brassies—"

"They do it their way, of course. Bria embarrassed Esk, so she kissed him."

"Skeletons don't do it that way?" This was interesting!

"Certainly not. How could we kiss?"

"I see your point. Yet in that case—"

"We knock skulls."

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"Hurt?"

She realized that pain would be a foreign concept to creatures who had no soft flesh. "I think I understand that it does not. But suppose a skeleton embarrassed a brassie? Would they kiss or knock heads?"

"How could a skeleton embarrass a brassie?" he asked.

That stumped her, so she moved on to another subject. "You said there were small skeletons. How do skeletons reproduce?"

"Very simple. He strikes her so hard she flies apart. That is known as

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knocking her up. Then he selects some of the smaller bones and assembles them into a baby skeleton."

"But doesn't she need those bones for herself?"

"Well, how does a living creature reproduce?"

"He inserts his seed in her, and she grows a foal from her flesh."

"Doesn't she need that flesh for herself?"

Chex considered. She concluded that Marrow had made his point.

In due course they reached Xap's stamping ground. The hippogryph was there, snoozing. He had the body of a centaur and the forepart of a griffin, with great golden wings and a golden bird-of-prey head. He was evidently past his prime, but still a powerful figure of a winged monster.

"Hello, sire," Chex called.

Xap snapped his head out from under his wing and squawked.

"He doesn't talk much," Chex explained to Marrow. "But I understand him well enough." Then, to the hippogryph: "Sire, this is Marrow Bones from the gourd. He would like to return if he can find a normal person oriented on his region."

Xap squawked again. Chex turned to Marrow, who remained on her back, swathed in his herringbone. "Sorry; my sire says the last time he looked in a gourd, all he saw was a lake of purple manure. I don't think you'd care to go there." The skeleton nodded agreement; manure made bones smell bad.

"Sire," she continued, "I am looking for help for a friend. I would like to ask the winged monsters for that help. Do you suppose I could meet with them?"

Xap squawked. "Who? Cheiron?" she asked. "No, I don't know him or of him, but I doubt that I need to. Sire, I wish you'd stop matchmaking! I've told you before that no ordinary centaur wants to mate with a winged one; most won't even speak to me. My centaur granddam won't, and she's typical. I feel more comfortable with the winged monsters. At least they don't treat me like a freak. That's why I'm hoping they might help, when the centaurs refused."

Xap squawked again. "But I can't go up there!" Chex protested. "It's inaccessible to landbound creatures!"

But it turned out that the winged monsters had a firm policy: they would not deal with any creature who would not meet them on their turf. Xap could help by notifying them of her coming appearance, but she would have to get herself to the turf.

Chex nerved herself. She dreaded the effort, but knew it was the only way. She knew the route, but doubted she could travel it. About the best she could do was to die trying.

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She explained this to Marrow as she started for the mountain trail. "But isn't dying awkward for fleshly creatures?" he inquired. "Very."

"Does it require courage for a fleshly creature to risk it, then?" "I suppose so," she agreed. "Fortunately, centaurs are noted for their courage." But her tongue was drying up in her mouth. How she wished she had been able to find the Good Magician and had learned how to fly! At the foot of the mountain she paused to defecate and urinate; there was no sense carrying any inessentials up! Marrow found this process quite interesting; his kind had no experience with it. "Life seems like such an inconvenient business," he remarked.

The trail proceeded steeply. Soon it came to a rushing torrent of water: the mountain's own process of urination. "Hold on," she warned Marrow. "There is no bridge; I'll have to ford this."

Marrow hung on, and she waded into the stream. The water was frigid; in a moment her legs were getting numb. Then the current intensified, doing its best to dislodge her footing, but she maintained it.

Then, in the center, the channel abruptly deepened. She was unable to find proper footing, and the rush of water was too fierce to permit her to swim.

Frustrated, shivering, she backed out. "I can't pass!" she said, uncertain whether the droplets on her face were from river spray or her eyes. "Allow me to inspect the situation," Marrow said. He climbed off her back, doffed his clothing, and walked along the bank, swinging his skull from side to side. "Yes, as I thought, there is a cave." "A cave? Here?" she asked. "How do you know?" "Skeletons have a sense about things underground," he explained. 'There is water in this cave, not as cold as the river, with very little current, and it is large enough for your body. I can guide you through it, if you wish."

"Yes!" she exclaimed, gratified. Then, realizing that there was a detail he might have overlooked: "But I have to breathe, you know. Is there any air?"

Marrow angled his skull, orienting on the hidden cave. "Some. In bubbles. Several paces apart. I can guide you."

Chex decided to take the plunge. "Then guide me! Just remember, I need to breathe every minute or so; if I don't, I'll drown." "What is drown?" "Dying because of insufficient air."

"Oh, yes; you don't find that comfortable. I will try to remember that: air every minute."

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"Exactly where is this cave?" she inquired, not completely at ease about this, but seeing no better alternative.

"Just a few paces upstream. It is quite convoluted.*'

Another problem occurred to her. "That means you will have to direct me constantly—but if it is underwater, you won't be able to speak."

"Oh, I can speak; you merely may have difficulty hearing."

"I appreciate the distinction. Let me explain to you how to direct me without words." She proceeded to drill him as she had Esk, so that he could guide her accurately with his knee bones and feet bones. Now the interference of his speech (or her hearing) would not put her at risk of drowning. Perhaps Marrow did not properly appreciate her concern about this detail, but she was greatly relieved anyway.

Whoa, his leg bones said.

Chex halted. "Here? But I don't see it."

Turn, the left knee said. Marrow was already good at this!

She turned to the stream. Caution, his knees said.

He was getting very good! She hadn't known that that directive existed! She stepped into the river, experiencing the deadly chill of it.

The bed fell sharply away; it was surprisingly deep here. Guided by his leg bones, she made her way around and down, discovering a big hole below the water's surface, slanting back under the bank and curving to be parallel to the river. Here was the cave!

She had to duck her head to get completely into it, but it was big enough to accommodate her. Before she did that, she turned one last time to face the skeleton. "Remember, you must direct me to air within a minute. How good is your time sense?"

"It is excellent," he assured her. "We must have precise timing when we dance, just as we need thorough coordination when we gamble."

"You gamble? How do you do that?"

"We roll the bones, of course. It's a great way to pass the time between gigs."

"Gigs?"

"Assignments. When an order for a bad dream comes in, and we have to perform. They never give us enough advance notice, so it can be a real scramble. So our existence consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by brief flurries of terror. It's just like war."

"Terror? What are you afraid of?"

"Not us; the recipients of the bad dreams."

"Well, just don't gamble with your timing! I'm about to undergo a brief period of terror myself, and I don't need any help in that!"

"The first air bubble is just fifty-two seconds distant," he said.

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Chex realized that she would just have to trust that. She inhaled deeply, causing a local fish to goggle at her chest, and held her breath, and ducked under the surface and into the cave.

Now she remembered her claustrophobia. She was heading into a confined region!

But it was filled with water, she told herself. That was different. The cave would not collapse, because it wasn't under pressure; the water sustained it. She had to believe that!

She tended to float, so that walking was difficult; she had to reach up with her hands and more or less pull herself along the roof of the cave. Marrow's firm knee pressure guided her, so that she encountered no dead ends or tight squeezes. He was correct about its temperature not being as cold as the river, though it was still uncomfortable. Her wings also helped; their feathers were insulative and protected that part of her torso. But she worried: had he assumed that she would be walking at her land-bound pace when he judged the time to the air bubble? If so, it would take her several times as long, and that would be a disaster! Should she turn back while there was still time?

She decided to gamble. After all, if the air turned out to be too far away, she would have no way to cross the river. Besides, if she turned back now, her claustrophobia would think it had the victory and would never let her try it again. So it was this or nothing. The bubble had to be within range!

Precisely fifty-two seconds after her start, her head poked into a bubble of air. She took an eager breath, her emotional relief greater even than her bodily relief. Marrow had been right about his excellent sense of timing!

The air was quickly turning bad; this was not a big bubble. She held her breath again and moved on, this time remembering to expel the spent air slowly from her mouth; that would save time when she hit the next bubble, and also give her a gradually increasing density so that her hooves would have slightly more traction.

The chill of the water was now numbing her eyeballs, causing blurring vision. It was so dark here that she really wasn't seeing anything, so she got smart and closed her eyes, protecting them. Now she was completely dependent on the skeleton's guidance. This, oddly, decreased her fear of enclosure; it was as if she were no longer herself, but a mere vehicle answering to directives.

In forty-one seconds she came to another bubble of air. This one was larger, so that she was able to breathe more thoroughly before moving on.

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Now Marrow guided her in a sharp turn to the right. The cave descended, then hooked up just hi time to give her another bubble. She realized that they were not necessarily following the most direct route, but rather the one that guaranteed an air bubble within every minute. The skeleton was doing an excellent job!

Just about the time she feared she would lose control of her limbs because of the deepening cold, the cave angled up, and her head broke the surface of the river near the other bank. They had made it across!

Chex stumbled out and stood shivering. Her body was in an awful state, but there was a warm core of gratitude to Marrow for getting her through. She had just navigated an otherwise impassable barrier! She had mastered not only the challenge of the river, but of the cold and her own claustrophobia. That was in its fashion a triple victory.

"You know," she gasped as her neck thawed, "if we find someone up on the mountain who orients on the haunted garden, we may have to wait to return you to the gourd, so that you can guide me back through this cave."

Marrow shrugged. "Why not? It is a very pleasant cave."

A pleasant cave! But of course the skeleton was immune to cold and accustomed to operating in darkness.

They resumed their trek up the mountain. Very little time had passed; it had merely seemed like an eon to her, as she had progressed bubble by bubble through the cave. Already she was wanning with the exertion. Maybe she really could make it to the top!

Time: just how much did she have? It had taken one day's travel to reach her sire, and another to reach the base of the mountain. If she made it to the top in one day, that would leave her one day there to convince the winged monsters to help. Then the three-day trek back to the rendezvous with Esk and Volney. She was on schedule, so far.

The thought of Esk reminded her of the manner he had missed their prior rendezvous. That had been an ugly occasion! Had the curse fiend Latia not had the wit to seek them herself, it could have been the end of Esk! All because he had foolishly asked her to curse him, thinking that it would be a blessing. Human beings did have an erratic streak that caused them to act in irrational ways. Some blessing!

Yet he had survived it, and even brought out a denizen of the gourd who was proving to be of considerable assistance to her now. What might have been a curse to Esk was, ironically, a blessing for Chex!

But the other party he had brought out was the brass girl. Her kind, it had turned out, atoned for incidental offenses by kissing, and evidently she had performed such an atonement for Esk. Human beings tended to

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be unduly influenced by appearance and action, rather than being guided by practical and intellectual considerations as centaurs were; that was another of the human liabilities. Sometimes she wondered just how the human species had survived so well in Xanth. On the other hoof, they did have some endearing qualities. Esk had accepted her immediately and used his magic talent to help safeguard her from mischief; in fact, he had been more generous to her than the centaurs had been. So she was not about to condemn the human folk; probably their assets did balance out their liabilities in the long run.

So Bria Brassie had kissed him, and the boy was obviously smitten. That was a curse indeed! Yet, with a further and exquisite irony, Esk evidently did not perceive this as an aspect of the curse. Could it be that his entry into the gourd really had been a blessing? If so, it had to be a powerful one, because Latia had explained the manner in which her curses strengthened when allowed to accumulate.

This intellectual riddle was intriguing, so she continued to divert herself with it as she progressed up the steep trail. Assume that Esk had been struck by a very potent blessing. Then her advantage of Marrow's help was only peripheral, part of that blessing, facilitating her mission, and therefore Esk's mission. And Bria—she could be a good deal more important to that mission than they had supposed.

But she was a creature of the gourd. That meant that she had to return to it, for her existence in this world was no more substantial than Esk's had been in the gourd. She had to rejoin her world, or she would eventually perish. What, then, of her interaction with Esk?

Assume that such an interaction was feasible. After all, Bria did look human, when allowance was made for her metal. Suppose Esk did not want to give her up? That was where the zombie's huge gourd came in: Esk could enter that physically and go after her, and perhaps bring Bria out physically.

No—if Marrow and Bria remained physically in the gourd, then it should not be feasible to return them to their home regions within it merely by having some person or creature of the outside realm look in through a peephole and take them along. So they must be physically outside. But Chex was sure that no denizens of the gourd had settled outside it, historically; her dam would have informed her of anything like that. So there had to be a reason that they could not survive indefinitely outside. What could that be?

Well, she had a source of information. "Marrow, what would be the consequence if you did not manage to return to your realm in the gourd?"

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"I would slowly fade away," he said promptly. "I am after all, merely the stuff of bad dreams."

"Then if Bria, to take a random example, wished to remain here, she could not?"

"She could not—unless she got access to a soul."

"Access to a soul?"

"We creatures of the dream realm have no souls, of course. That is our primary distinction from you living folk. If we had souls, we would come alive, and be able to survive normal terms here."

Now Chex remembered: there was a great demand for souls in the gourdl The reason was suddenly clear. "My dam gave up half her soul to the night mare Imbri."

"Yes, half a soul becomes a whole soul, as it fills out. This takes time, but is done on occasion."

"So if someone were to give you half a soul, you would be able to live here indefinitely?"

"True. But of course I have no wish to live. I am surprised that you folk put up with the awkwardness and occasional messiness of it."

Chex nodded. She believed she had worked out a solution to Esk's problem, if it developed. If she survived this mountain hike. She was sure that Esk would not be able to devise a solution on his own; he lacked centaur rationality.

She came out of her reverie to discover the trail narrowing. They were well up the mountain now, and the slope was becoming sheer; there was barely room for her hooves on the slightly diminished slant that was the path.

Then it became too slight for her; the girth of her body caused her center of gravity to be too far out from the face of the mountain to remain stable. If she tried to go any farther, she would inevitably fall.

She stopped; she had to. The suggestion of the trail continued on around the curve of the mountain, with an awesome height of wall above, and a mind-blanking depth of drop below. She could not climb that cliff, and would certainly die if she fell. What could she do?

"I don't suppose you know of a nearby cave?" she asked Marrow.

"No cave," the skeleton replied.

"Then I fear we cannot continue. This is, as far as I know, the only trail, and it is too narrow for my body."

The skeleton considered. "It does not appear to be too narrow for my body."

"That may be true. But I am the one who must reach the meeting

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plateau and address the winged monsters; they would not listen to you, as you are not winged."

"Still, I think I might assist you. Could you manage that path if you had a line to cling to?"

"Yes, I suppose I could. But I don't carry a line; I'm a bow and arrow centaur. My arms aren't strong enough to sustain my full weight on a line, you see. My grandsire Chester has very strong arms; he could do it, but not me." She clenched her teeth with frustration. "Oh, how I wish I could fly!"

"But you could hold on, with support for your feet."

"Yes. But even if I had a line, I could not attach it, because I can't even see the other end of the trail."

"I shall look." Marrow dismounted and walked along the trail. As the ledge narrowed, he had to turn sidewise and step carefully, but it was evident that he had no fear of heights or of falling. That seemed to be another advantage of being nonalive. He moved on around the curve and disappeared from sight.

After a while he returned. "There is a rock that I could cling to," he announced.

"How nice for you," Chex said, trying not to be cutting.

"So if you will just kick me apart, then swing me around so that I can grasp on with one hand, it will be all right."

Chex's dismay received a jolt. Was Marrow proposing suicide in his fashion? "What?"

"Just let me take hold here, so I don't fall off the ledge," he said. "Now kick me hard."

"But that would destroy you!" she exclaimed, appalled.

"Oh, no, we can re-form readily, when prepared. Kick me apart; then I will explain the next step."

Chex had considerable difficulty accepting this, but finally did what he asked. She retreated along the trail until it widened, turned around, and backed up to the place where he was holding on to a solid rock. Then she gave him a tremendous kick on the hipbone with a hind foot.

The skeleton flew apart. The bones sailed into the air, disconnecting. But then something strange happened. The bones did not disconnect all the way; instead they formed into a line that flopped down the mountainside.

"Now haul me up," Marrow's voice came.

She walked back to the turnaround point, then came forward again. She braced herself and peered down over the ledge.

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The line of bones extended well down the slope. About halfway along it was the skull. "Haul me," it repeated.

This was strange magic! She took hold of a bone and drew it up. Marrow's finger bone was no longer connected to his hand bone, or his hand bone to his wrist bone; one finger bone was connected to another and another, forming the line. She hauled the line up hand over hand, noting that the finger and arm bones connected to rib bones and neck bones and finally the head bone.

"Now swing the rest out around the mountain," the skull told her. "Up to the level of the trail; the rock is not far beyond your vision."

Chex obeyed. She started the line of bones swinging back and forth, pendulum fashion, until she was able to bring the end of the line high enough. Then, just at its height, she let go, and it flung out, slapping against the mountain.

"Got it!" the skull exclaimed. "Now pull me tight."

Chex gazed at the arc of bones. "But if I pull too hard, won't you come apart?"

"I don't think so. I will warn you when my limit approaches."

So she hauled on the line again, and the line tightened, until when she held an arm bone the skull called out "enough."

"What now?" she called back.

"Touch the arm bone to the hand bone."

She held a loop of the bone line. She brought the arm bone to the hand bone—and immediately the two snapped together as if magnetized.

"Now use me to keep your balance," the skull called. "Try not to put too much strain on me."

Chex looked at the narrow path, with the bone line now stretched above it. It seemed perilously precarious. But Marrow had known what he was doing before, so she had to trust him now.

She held on to the line and walked out along the precipice. The wall shoved her solid equine body out, and she could not brace with her feet. Her wings made it worse, because they added to the breadth of her body when folded, and there was no room to open them here. She clung to the line, her body increasingly off-balance, leaning out over the gulf below. She had never been afraid of heights, just of depths, but it would be easy enough to cultivate such a phobia now!

Her hands were becoming somewhat sweaty, but she could not clean them. She hoped the bones weren't ticklish.

"That's very good," Marrow's skull said, right under her hand.

Startled, Chex almost let go of the line. She had for the moment forgotten the nature of it! "Thank you," she muttered tersely.

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She handed herself on along the rib bones and the backbones and the hipbones, closing her mind to the precise nature of them, not from any humanlike skittishness, but because she did not want to raise any question in her mind about how they were able to hold together in this format. Marrow was a more surprising creature than she had first thought!

Finally she reached the end, where the trail widened and the endmost finger bone clung. It had found a niche in the stone and hooked into it. Had she realized that this was all that supported the line, and therefore her tilting body, she would have been even more concerned than she had been!

She got her footing and let go of the line. "I'm across!" she called to the skull. "What now?"

"Haul me in," the skull called, as the line swung down from the other side. The far finger had let go.

She hauled hi the bones, hand over hand. "That's good," the skull said as it arrived, giving her a momentary stare with an eye socket.

"But how do you get back together?" she asked.

"For that I will require some assistance," the skull admitted. "You will have to set the bones together in the proper order."

"But I don't know the proper order, except in a very general way!"

"I will direct you."

And so it was. She touched each bone to the one the skull called out, and it anchored in place. Before too long Marrow was back in proper skeletal shape.

"The more I learn about you, the more I respect you," she told him as the job was completed. "I never realized that bones could be so versatile."

'Thank you. I must confess that your flesh is not nearly as clumsy or repulsive as I had anticipated."

"Thank you," she said with the trace of a smile.

They moved on up the mountain. The way was easier now, as the slope gradually leveled; they were nearing the crest. Just as well, for the day was drawing toward its close, and she did not want to be on the trail at night. If any of the winged monsters mistook her for nocturnal prey, her situation could become difficult.

Then they came to a cleft in the mountain. It cut right across the path, as though it had started as a crack and widened with time, until now it was a formidable gap. How was she to get across it?

She looked around. There were a few scrubby trees, and some dead wood, and some weeds, and assorted loose rocks. That was it. She looked

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again at the cleft. It was plainly beyond her jump range. There seemed to be no narrowing of it to the sides; in fact, this was its narrowest part. The entire top of the mountain was split, and the meeting plateau was on the other side.

"I can perhaps throw you across," she told Marrow. "But it is too far for me."

"I see no handholds," the skeleton said. "And if there were, I fear I could not sustain your full weight. Cohesion only goes so far."

"To be sure," she agreed. "You have done more than enough; I would not ask you to attempt that, even if I had sufficient arm strength to manage such a crossing. There has to be another way."

But was there? None of the items of deadwood were large enough to form a bridge, and certainly the stones would not do it. Unless—

She got to work, not letting herself think about how risky it was. She picked up wood, and rolled rocks, forming a pile at the brink of the cleft. She packed them in as solidly as she could, fashioning a ramp whose height rose significantly above the ground.

Marrow appraised this activity with a tilted eyeball socket. "Isn't this a diversion of the strength you need to cross the cleft?" he inquired.

"I'm building a ramp," she explained. "My hope is that it will enable me to achieve a broader leap."

He considered. "Judging by your demonstrated power of foot and present mass, I believe you will fall short of the far landing by this amount," he said, holding his hand bones about a body width apart.

Chex remembered how accurate his estimate of her progress in the water cave had been. That dismayed her. She had hoped that the added elevation would do the trick. She had used up all the available materials; she could build the ramp no higher.

But she had one other chance. "I cannot fly, but my wings do provide some lift," she said. "Will that extend my distance enough?"

"I have no knowledge of the parameters of flying," he said.

"It will have to do," she said. "Let me toss you across now, and I will join you in a moment."

"As you wish."

She picked him up by neck bone and hipbone, swung him back, then heaved him across. He landed in a pile, but in a moment straightened out; he was not subject to bruises. Then she tossed her bow and quiver of arrows across, and her supply pack; she wanted to carry no weight she could avoid on the jump.

Then, reflecting, she caught up again on natural functions. That was

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one more way to reduce weight. She had not eaten during this climb and was hungry, but at the moment that was for the best.

It was time. She trotted to the other side of the crest, then started her takeoff run. She accelerated steadily and smoothly, saving her peak effort for the conclusion. She hit the ramp, put forth her full strength, and galloped up it. At the very brink she leaped into the air.

The moment she was over the cleft, she spread her wings and flapped them mightily. She felt their downdraft, but knew it was not enough; her effort at flight was mere pretense.

Then her front hooves came down on the rock, and she knew she had made it. She brought her rear hooves up to overlap the prints of the front ones, securing her landing, and made a small secondary leap to reorient. For the first time in her life, her wings had made a significant and positive difference! How glad she was that she had built up her pectorals!

She came to a halt, then turned to face Marrow, panting. "I hope that's the last hazard of the trail!"

"Interesting," he remarked. "Your wings did extend your distance significantly."

"Most interesting," she agreed wryly. It seemed that skeletons were not much for emotion, other than the generation of terror in bad dreams.

She ate some fruit from her pack, then donned her knapsack and bow and quiver. "It can't be far now," she said.

"It is not," Marrow agreed. "They are just beyond the next crest."

"How do you know that?"

*'I can feel the quiver of the ground as they land."

Skeletons were evidently very sensitive to quivers of the ground! "Good enough! I'll go make my pitch."

"Pitch? You plan to fashion another ramp?"

"Ramp? Not unless there's another jump!"

"Pitch is the inclination of a declivity."

"It is also the inclination of a presentation."

"Amazing."

They crested this portion of the mountain. The lofty plateau opened out, and there were the winged monsters.

They were of all types: griffins, dragons, rocs, sphinxes and assorted less common creatures, such as the hippogryph.

Xap stepped forward. He squawked.

"I understand," Chex said. "I had to make it on my own, or they would not listen to me. Will they listen now?"

He squawked affirmatively.

"O winged monsters," Chex said. "I come on behalf of the voles of the

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Vale. The demons have straightened the Kiss-Mee River and turned it ugly and mean, and prevent the voles from restoring it to its natural meandering. Will you help hold off the demons so that the river can be restored?"

There was a babble of squawks and hisses and growls. Then Xap squawked.

"They will decide tomorrow," Chex repeated.

Xap squawked again.

"I must meet Cheiron?" she asked. "You mentioned him before. Sire, you know I have trouble with centaurs! My granddam refuses even to talk to me, and the centaurs of the Isle would not let me address them."

The hippogryph shrugged and dropped the subject. He helped her forage for her supper and showed her to a suitable place to spend the night. Marrow, who needed no sleep, spent the night walking around and making the acquaintance of the various monsters. "A number of these would do well in bad dreams," he remarked, impressed.

In the morning Xap explained the mechanism of the decision. Because language was a problem with many of the monsters, and so was logic, they would abide by a presentation made by champions. She would represent the cause of the voles, and Cheiron would represent the cause of the winged monsters. The cause that was most persuasive would win.

Chex realized that she, in her fatigue of the prior day, had blundered. She had rejected an introduction to the centaur, and now Cheiron was angry, and she had to oppose him formally. She was confident that she could have made her case successfully against one of the bird-brained monsters, but a centaur was a different matter. Now she had to go up against an intellect comparable to her own.

Well, what was done was done. Perhaps Cheiron would appreciate the plight of the voles despite his private affront. She would just have to do the best presentation she could.

But when she stepped out to meet Cheiron, there was only a great wash of darkness hovering over the plain. It was as though a storm cloud had moved in. "What is this?" she asked, perplexed.

Xap squawked.

"Light and darkness^" she repeated. "I am the light, he the dark? How can I make my presentation?"

Xap squawked again.

"With my mind?" Yes, that was it. She had assumed that the presentation would be verbal and logical; now she realized that it was not merely a matter of having champions to make the presentations; the presentations themselves had to be in a form intelligible to the less sophisticated

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monsters. Thus light and darkness; flying creatures were good at determining shades.

The winged monsters were positioned in a circle covering the plateau. All of them faced in toward the center. They were as still as statues, waiting.

She thought of the Vale of the Vole as Volney had described it, in its original state: verdant, peaceful, pleasant, the Kiss-Mee River caressing it with its meanders. Of how any creatures that drank from it became suffused with good will and affection, though not compelled into embarrassing or awkward romantic relationships as happened with love springs. Light flared around her, diminishing the darkness above, and at the interface between the two the contrasts formed a picture that showed her vision.

Then she thought of the way the demons had come, channelizing the river, replacing its soft curves with hard, straight lines. The picture shifted to show the meanness of the present Vale, where vegetation was dying and creatures shunned each other, and the motto was Kick Mee or even Kill Mee.

Finally she made her plea. The images of flying monsters manifested in the picture, swooping down on the shapes of the demons, harrying them, driving them out of the Vale. Vole shapes appeared, tunneling through the dikes and walls, letting the captive water out, so that the Kiss-Mee could return to its natural state and nourish the Vale of the Vole again.

Now Cheiron's countercase developed. The flying monsters descended on the demons, but the demons fought back, dematerializing and reforming behind the monsters, throwing rocks at them, stabbing them, pulling the feathers from their wings. Soon the poor monsters were in a big pile on the ground, wounded and dying, while the voles remained unable to do their work on the dikes. Then the demons piled brush on the pile of injured creatures and set fire to it.

When Chex had made her presentation, the light about her had expanded, until the whole plateau was illuminated, and the darkness above had diminished. When Cheiron made his response, the darkness grew, reaching down, squeezing out the light. Even the fire in the picture blazed darkly, with the smoke roiling up like a bad dream of the gourd and merging with the darkness. The light remained strong only around Chex herself; she had lost ground.

She tried again. She thought of the way Esk was going to see the ogres, who were his ancestors just as the winged monsters were hers, to ask for the help that his human kind refused to extend. She thought of Volney Vole, tunneling down to visit the most dreaded of his kin, the wiggles, on

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a similar mission. If either of these agreed to help, then the winged monsters would not be alone, and might after all be able to prevail against the formidable demons.

As she thought, her light brightened and pushed back the darkness, farther than before, and the images in the picture glowed. The marching ogres seemed almost noble, and the demons looked affrighted as the forces of both ground and air advanced. Victory was possible!

Cheiron's return sally came. The darkness swelled against the bright picture, and the picture grew smaller, as if retreating, until it was tiny and far away. What did the winged monsters care what the land-bound monsters did? The demons were no threat to the creatures of the air!

Chex did not wait for that case to be complete. She surged back with an impromptu thesis of emotion. The winged monsters did care, they had to care, for what harmed one part of Xanth harmed all parts, and what harmed the monsters of the land also harmed those of the air. Human beings might be callous about the problems of a nonhuman region, and centaurs might be indifferent to noncentaur matters, but surely the winged monsters wanted to have a better rapport with other creatures than this!

As she projected those thoughts, the light rallied and pushed back the darkness. But the darkness forged back. There was no point in having the winged monsters be as foolish as the ground-borne monsters; all of them could perish on this foolish quest.

But Chex would not abide that. Even if the quest were hopeless, still it was a worthy one. The deed should be done because it was worth doing, without regard to possible failure. Other creatures might mask their cowardice with expressions of indifference, but this should not be the way of the boldest of all creatures, the winged monsters! Better to die in such an honorable quest, than to live in the dishonor of noninvolvement, the way the humans and centaurs were. Human folk did not seem to care about the plight of volish folk, but other animals should.

Her light brightened and spread with every point, beating back the darkness, until little was left of it except a small cloud. Now secondary sources of light were starting up, like flames ignited by flying sparks. These were from the monsters that rimmed the plateau; they agreed with her!

The dark cloud shrank, until at last the figure hovering within it became visible. And suddenly Chex felt faint.

Cheiron was a winged centaur/

Of course she should have realized that before! She had correctly identified his name as typical of centaurs, but had failed to connect this with

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the fact that every creature on this plateau was winged. The path she had taken up had been little used, and there had been no centaur prints showing on it. The only way Cheiron could have come here was by flying. This should have been obvious to her instantly; she had blundered personally as well as tactically. She had alienated the only other creature of her precise kind.

The last of the darkness above dissipated, and the sun shone down. But in Chex's heart new darkness was welling. How could she have been so wrongheaded!

Cheiron flew down toward her, and the sunlight highlighted his silver wings and his golden hooves. He was the handsomest centaur she had even seen! He appeared to be of mature age, certainly older than she, well muscled and sleekly structured. And he could fly!

He landed before her and folded his wings, but she was too chagrined to meet his gaze. "I like your spirit, filly," he said. "You fought your way up here, and you fought your way through the darkness I spread. Your sire was right about you: you are worthy not only because you are the only other of my kind in Xanth. I came here from afar when I heard of you, hoping you were worthwhile."

Timidly, flushing in the atrocious human manner, she looked at him. He was smiling. "You—you are not angry that I did not meet you before?"

"Furious," he said. "But you are young yet, and cannot be expected to have mastery of all social graces, especially when most centaurs shun you. I know how that is; believe me, I know! At least it gave me the pretext to try your mettle. The winged monsters will travel to the Vale of the Vole; you have persuaded them. And I—"

She gazed at him, smitten the manner of any adolescent in the presence of wonder. What a creature he was! "And you—?"

"I will welcome you—when you fly to me." He turned, spread his wings, and took off, leaving her in the downblast of air that was scarcely more tumultuous than her emotions.

She had to learn to fly!

Chapter 11. Ogre

1 hey walked along the path to Castle Roogna. Chex had promised Princess Ivy that she would send Esk in for a report once she found him, and Ivy had promised in return to dig out something else to help them get help for the Kiss-Mee River. As it was turning out, little Ivy was doing almost as much good for them as her parents might have.

"Who is Ivy?" Bria inquired.

Esk explained, for of course Bria had very little information about the normal Xanth hierarchies.

"Oh, she's Irene's daughter!" Bria exclaimed. "My mother Blythe knew Irene."

"She did?" Esk asked, startled. "How could that be?"

"After your ogre father tore up Marrow's folk, he went on to tear up the brassies, and he abducted Blythe to this world. There she got to know several interesting people, including your mother Tandy, and later she came to help Mare Imbri rescue your kings."

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he asked.

"I didn't think it was relevant. Besides, a girl has to be careful around ogres. Your father put a dent in my mother."

"He wouldn't do a thing like that! He's always been loyal to my mother!"

"Are you saying it's not true? You embarrass me."

Esk paused. This promised to become complicated. "Uh, no, I'm not saying that."

"Then what are you saying?"

"Just that there must be some misunderstanding."

"Oh." She seemed disappointed. "Anyway, later she married my father, but I think she missed the outside world some. I grew up very curious about it. That's how I got lost; I was looking for a way out."

Esk smiled. "Well, you found a way out!"

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"No, you found it. I'm not really out, though; I'm trapped here the same way you were trapped inside."

"You mean your body is still there on the Lost Path?"

"No. But I'm not really out, either, because the moment you go back into the gourd, I'll go back too, or fade out, or something—I don't know exactly what happens, but it isn't good. What I need is a way to get stabilized, so I don't get into trouble here."

"Chex found a physical way into the gourd!" Esk exclaimed. "Through the zombie gourd! Maybe if you went back in through that—"

"Going in won't do me any good."

"But I thought—"

She glanced at him appraisingly. "You shouldn't try to think, Esk. It's bad for ogres."

"Well, maybe you could go back in with me, and then go out through that big gourd. Then you'd be out on your own, and not dependent on me."

"That won't work either. I'm on the Lost Path, remember."

"Yes, but if we find someone who enters the gourd at your home region, then that person can take you back in, and you won't be lost anymore."

"But I still wouldn't know where the zombie gourd is. I would just get lost again, trying to find it."

"That's ridiculous!" he snapped. "You could get a map or something, and find it. Someone in there has to know where it is!"

"You think I'm ridiculous!" she exclaimed, her brass face clouding up. "You embarrassed me!"

Oops. He had been trying to avoid trouble, but had somehow walked into it anyway. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"That's no way to apologize!"

Esk glanced at her, then at Latia, helplessly.

"Go ahead," the curse fiend said shortly. "Apologize the proper way."

"Uh, yes," Esk said. He stopped walking, and Bria stopped walking. He took her in his arms. "I apologize for embarrassing you," he said, and gave her a quick kiss.

She stood motionless, seeming to be a brass statue. "I don't think you did a good enough job," Latia remarked.

Esk tried again. "Bria, I'm very sorry I embarrassed you, and I humbly apologize," he said, and kissed her somewhat more authoritatively.

Still the brassie girl stood, absolutely frozen. It was as if she had been cast in metal and allowed to harden in place.

"You need instruction in kissing," Latia snorted disdainfully.

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Stung, Esk wrapped his arms about Bria, swung her around, and gave her a kiss that threatened to bruise his lips.

Then at last Bria melted. "Accepted," she murmured.

"Now there's a girl who would be excellent on the stage," Latia murmured. "I have seldom seen better management."

"What?" Esk asked.

"Nothing," the old woman said, with the suggestion of a smirk.

They resumed their walk toward Castle Roogna, but now Esk's head was spinning in much the way it had the first time Bria had kissed him. He tried to remember exactly how he had embarrassed her, but was unable. He tried to figure out what the curse fiend woman meant about management, but drew another blank.

Before long they reached Castle Roogna. Princess Ivy danced out to meet them. "You found him!" she cried happily.

"Volney Vole sniffed him out," Latia said. "The centaur and the vole had to go on additional searches, but we brought him back here."

"He looks sort of dazed," the girl said.

"He was some time in the gourd."

"Oh. That would do it." Then she noticed Bria. "Hello. Who're you?"

"Just something he fished out of the gourd," Bria said.

"You're a gourd folk? How exciting!"

Esk found his tongue. "She's Bria Brassie. Her mother knew your mother."

"A brassie? Then her mother must be Blythe Brassie, who got the dent from Smash Ogre!"

Bria glanced sidelong at Esk, who almost choked.

Fortunately Ivy was prancing on to a new subject. "I found something to help! A pathfinder spell!"

"A pathfinder?" Esk asked, accepting the object she gave him. It looked like a bit of twisted wire.

"It's a spell, and it finds your path for you," Ivy explained. "Wherever you want to go."

"That's easy. I want to go and ask the ogres if they will help the voles. But I can't walk there and back within a week, unless you have some more of those speed pills."

"No, I don't dare take any more; someone'd notice. But this is just as good. Ask it for the path to the ogres!"

"You don't understand. I can find the ogres; I just need more time than I have."

"Then ask it for the path that'll take you there in the time you have," Ivy said brightly.

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"That spell can do that?"

"Sure. But there's one problem. It works only once for each person."

"Well, I can follow the same path back; that's no problem."

The girl's forehead wrinkled. "I'm not sure it's like that. I don't think you can find the path again without it."

"I know a path like that," Bria remarked. "Only you can't find your way/rom it."

"Gee, that must be fun!" Ivy said.

"I suppose I could use the spell to get there," Esk said. "Then hope to make it back the regular way in time. Maybe it can be done."

"You can get back, stupid," Ivy said. "Just have a friend use the spell to find the return path."

"Why that's right!" Esk exclaimed. "I'm embarrassed! I should have thought of it."

"Uh-oh," Latia muttered.

"You embarrassed him," Bria said to Ivy. "You will have to apologize."

Ivy was interested. "Gee—how do I do that?"

"Like this," Bria said. She put her arms around Esk. "I apologize," she said. Then she kissed him.

"Extraordinary!" Latia murmured admiringly. "No opportunity wasted!"

"That looks like fun," Ivy said.

At that point there was a splash and yowl from the moat. "Oops— Moatie's teasing someone again. Gotta go!" Ivy dashed off.

Esk examined the spell. "I'll need someone to go with me, I suppose," he said.

"Have no fear; we are both going with you," Latia said.

"But I'm going to ogre country!" he protested. "It may be dangerous."

"That is why we're going with you," Bria said. "Men always d<5 get into trouble on their own."

Esk wasn't completely certain of her logic, but he was still slightly unbalanced from the last kiss or two, so accepted it. He knew that Bria was mainly teasing him with those kisses, because she was of a different world, to which she would in due course return, but still the kisses had their impact. If only he could find a real girl like her!

"Then I'd better figure out how to use this spell," he said, looking at the pathfinder.

"That's no problem," Latia said. "We curse fiends have used them on occasion. Simply hold it up, focus on it, and say the name of the place to which you wish to find a path."

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"Oh." Esk held out the wire and opened his mouth.

"But also specify that you want the shortest path," Latia added. "Otherwise you might get the scenic route; that would be longer than the one you would find on your own."

"Thank you for that little detail," Bria said.

Latia glanced at her. "Are you being snide, girl? That would embarrass me."

"No, not at all," Bria said quickly. "I was only being appreciative!"

"I thought as much."

When it came to management, Esk realized, the old woman was no slouch. Women of all ages seemed to be better at that than men were; even little Ivy had managed to get around her father's restrictions without much difficulty.

He addressed the pathfinder spell again. He focused closely on it. "The shortest path to the Ogre-Fen-Ogre Fen," he said.

He bunked, for there before him was a path he hadn't seen before. It was reasonably wide and firm and clear; there would be no trouble following it. But it was headed south.

"The ogre fen is in the north!" he objected. "This is the wrong path!"

"Poppycock," Latia snappped. "Pathfinders never err. Trust it instead of your private judgment."

Esk realized that he had no particular choice, because if he didn't take the proffered path, he would have to find his own way, which would take him a week or so one way. He stepped out on the path.

Latia and Bria followed. The path bore contentedly south, entering the thickest jungle. Then, safely out of sight of Castle Roogna, it changed course, curving back to the north. "See? It knows where it's going," Latia said.

"But how can it be the shortest path, when it just added this extra loop south?" Esk asked.

"Maybe it has a sense of privacy."

The path curved left, and continued curving, until it intersected itself slightly above its prior level. The curve tightened, completing a second loop, coming in just above and inside itself.

"This path is just playing with us!" Esk said. "It's not going anywhere."

"It probably has its reasons," Latia said. "Don't criticize it too sharply; you might embarrass it."

Esk didn't want to kiss the path, so he refrained from further comment. The spiral continued, until it became quite high and tight; they were circling in a narrow radius at treetop level.

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Then at last the path took off to the north again, along the branch of a giant tree. "See, it just needed to wind up to its elevation," Bria said, pleased. "It must be a female path; it knows what it's doing, even if others don't."

Esk hoped so. The branch gnarled down into the depths of the foliage, and the shade deepened, so that they had to watch carefully to make sure of their footing. There were many side branches, but they could tell which one that path followed because it was well worn. Esk wondered about that; the Lost Path in the gourd had been tricky to follow in places because of disuse. Who used this one so much?

"Probably there are several standard paths," Latia remarked, answering his thought. "Maybe segments of them get assembled, end to end, to make a particular route to a particular destination. So this segment has been much used, but only by folk going to other regions. It hardly matters, so long as the programming is accurate for us."

They came to the trunk of the tree. There was a hole in it, and the path entered the hole. The interior was like a tunnel, surprisingly extensive; it continued long after it seemed to Esk that it should have emerged from the far side of the tree. The sides grew smoother, and assumed a faint glistening as if moist.

Then Esk encountered a stalactite. "Now wait a moment!" he exclaimed. "Stalacs are in caves!"

"That is curious," Latia agreed. She put her hand to the descending cone. "But this is after all wood."

Esk touched it. Sure enough, it was wood. The darkness had given it another semblance.

The tunnel finally emerged onto another branch. "Is this the same tree?" Bria asked, blinking in the sudden light.

Indeed, it seemed different. The bark was smoother, and the diameter of the trunk seemed smaller. Curious, Esk held on and worked his way around the outside until he could see the side they had entered.

There was no entry. The tree had a hole on only one side—the side from which they had exited.

He returned and peered back into the tunnel. It extended way back, and there was light at the end.

"You act as if you had never before seen a magic path," Latia remarked.

Esk was embarrassed, but struggled manfully to master it, fearing the consequence more than the embarrassment itself. He turned his face forward and strode out along the branch path.

This one had smaller branches that extended up, overhanging it, and

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some of these bore fruit. Esk reached up and plucked a plumb that was bobbing below a stringlike twig. Plumbs always grew that way, straight up and down, and bobbing when they were ripe. He bit into it, and it was juicy and good. So this was a plumb tree!

But farther along the branch were two matching fruits of a different type. They were greenish-yellow, and thickest through their bases. He plucked them both, for it was impossible to pluck a single one; that was the nature of pairs. These, too, were very good.

Farther along was a big pineapple. He let that one pass; that kind of fruit was apt to be explosive.

"This is a versatile fruit tree," Latia remarked.

At last the path passed from the tree. It stair-stepped down to the ground, and then coursed along to a small river.

Esk paused. "I don't see the continuation across the river."

Latia and Bria looked. The path intersected the river at a slant, and did not resume beyond it.

"Only one explanation," Latia said. She stepped into the river.

Her foot did not splash into the water. It landed on it as if encountering solidity. She took another step, and stood on the water. "Just as I suspected," she said. "The path goes on the river."

Esk, at this point, knew better than to question it. He stepped out on the water, and found it as solid as ice but not cold. This was the path, all right. He should have realized before, for the path from the Good Magician's castle had crossed water too.

Bria followed. "I think I like the ways of the outer world," she said, fluffing out her skirt.

Esk, looking at her, discovered that the water she stood on was reflective. He could see right up her legs. He turned again, quickly. Even though he had seen all of her legs in the gourd, before she put on the dress, he felt guilty about seeing them now. Guilty about wanting to see them.

"Did I embarrass you?" Bria inquired.

And there was the other aspect of that trap! He wanted to tell her the truth, that she had inadvertently embarrassed him, through no fault of her own, but he knew that would only complicate things. "I, uh, embarrassed myself," he said.

She laughed. "You're going to have trouble settling that!"

Trouble, indeed! He knew she was only teasing him; possibly she understood about the reflection. Why couldn't his emotion follow his intellect, and accept the brassie girl as a temporary acquaintance?

The river broadened, until they were walking well away from either

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shore. Now water lilies spread across its calm surface, obscuring the reflections, which was a relief. But where was the path going? It seemed to have little concern about its destination; sometimes it bore north, sometimes south, and sometimes east or west. Now it was heading out into what promised to become a lake. When would it get serious about its destination?

Abruptly it stopped. Latia, now leading the way, suddenly splashed into the lake beside a big green lily pad.

Esk dropped to his belly on the solid portion of the path and reached down to haul her out. His questing hand caught her bony ankle. He yanked on it—and felt the sting of a slap. What was happening?

Then Latia's head poked up. "Sorry, Esk—I thought you were a leech or something. It's all right—the path is down here. Just step down and reorient." Her head resubmerged.

"Did you notice—her hair wasn't even wet," Bria said.

Esk hadn't noticed, but now he recalled it. He had reached into the water, but his arm was dry.

He stepped off the end of the path, and dropped into the water. He was holding his breath, but it didn't seem necessary; he wasn't really submerged. In a moment his body twisted around, and he found his feet coming to rest against the underside of the lily pad. He was standing upside down, in the lake!

He tried breathing, and it was all right. He saw fish in the water, swimming normally, which was inverted compared to him, but to him the water was air.

He looked down (up) the way he had come, and saw Bria's legs. They were very nice legs, all the way up. Yet again he wrenched away his gaze and tried to stifle a blush.

Then Bria jumped in. She spun about and landed beside him on the lily pad, which bowed with their weight. "Careful," she said. "We don't want to break through and fall out through the sky!"

Esk stepped across to the next lily pad. He discovered that these pads had no stems; they were just there. He squatted and touched his finger to the lake surface between pads. His hands broke through the surface tension and dangled in the air.

"We'd better stick to the pads," he said. "I think they're the stepping stones."

They moved on, following the irregular trail of green pads. Finally the slope of the lakebed descended, requiring them to duck their heads. When it became so shallow that they could not walk, Esk tried stepping through the surface and resuming normal orientation.

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He found himself thigh-deep in the lake, looking at a solid jungle of thorns. The path did not continue in this direction!

Latia emerged. "There they are," she said. "Cloudstones."

Esk looked. There above the lake was a small line of tiny clouds, the nearest and lowest within stepping range.

He shrugged and stepped onto it. It depressed a little, wobbling, but sustained his weight. He stepped quickly to the next, which was higher and larger, and this one was more stable.

Bria emerged. "Oh, I like this world better and better!" she exclaimed. "We don't have anything like this in the gourd!"

Esk refrained from pointing out that he hadn't seen it in this world either, until now. Maybe he just hadn't traveled enough, before.

The cloudstones took them safely across the lake and down to the far shore. Why the path hadn't gone directly there Esk couldn't guess, but he was in no position to question its rationale. Just so long as it got them to ogre country within three days!

At last the path resumed normal operation, proceeding directly north through mixed terrain—until they came to the mirror.

It stood across the path, a vertical full-length sheet of glass, big enough to reflect a complete man. Esk would have crashed right into it, because it reflected the path perfectly, making it look like a continuation—but he saw himself approaching and realized what it was before colliding. So he stopped, and admired his somewhat bedraggled image. Bria looked much better, but Latia looked worse.

He peered around the mirror. Beyond was a dense, impenetrable curse-burr patch. To the sides were itch plants. Above was the foliage of a poison acorn tree. This was a dead end that was really deadly!

**There has to be a way," Latia muttered. "Maybe this is a door." She poked her finger experimentally at the glass.

Her finger passed through it without resistance. "I think I have found it," she said, as her hand and then her arm disappeared into the mirror. The reflection showed only that portion of her that was on the near side.

"But we don't know what's in there!" Esk warned, for he saw that her arm was not emerging from the other side of the mirror. It was like the hole in the tree: it came out elsewhere.

"The other end of the path, obviously," she said, and put her head through. In a moment the rest of her disappeared, and the mirror was clear.

"You look a mess," Bria said, contemplating Esk's reflection. "Let me comb your hair." She brought out a brass comb from somewhere.

"Uh, but—" he protested weakly.

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"Oh, did I embarrass you? I'd better apologize."

"No, no, that's all right!"

"It's best to be sure." She put her arms around him.

Esk knew he should protest some more, but he lacked the gumption. She squeezed him closely and kissed him, and she was warm and soft and fascinating. He closed his eyes, and knew that he would not have known she was brass from the present feel of her. Again he felt as if he were floating.

"If—if you are made of hard metal," he said as she released him, "how can you be so—so—?"

"Oh, I can be quite soft when I want to be," she said. "After all, we brassies couldn't move very well if we remained absolutely rigid."

"But your mother—that dent—"

"The ogre caught her by surprise. He picked her up by her brassiere, then dropped her on the brass hat of the man below."

Esk began to get a notion where the dent might have been. "I see. So it was an accident. But wouldn't the dent have undented when she turned soft again?"

"No, dents are the most permanent kinds of things. She's still got it; she pretends it's a dimple."

"I can see why you dislike ogres."

"No, I always thought it was romantic. I'd like to meet an ogre myself."

"Well, I'm part ogre."

"I know," she said softly. Then: "Oops, did I embarrass you? You're blushing again."

"No, no, it's all right!" he said.

But she decided to play it safe, and apologized in her fashion.

"Well," Latia remarked, stepping out of the mirror. "I can see that you folk were really concerned about my welfare while I was in the mirror."

"Uh—" Esk said.

"Don't tell me, let me guess. She embarrassed you."

"It's amazing how often I do that," Bria remarked innocently. "I must be very clumsy about outside world ways."

"To be sure," Latia agreed dryly. "Well, I'm here to report that the path continues beyond. It's an odd scene, but presumably it is what we want."

They stepped through the mirror. The other side was indeed strange; instead of being a mirror, it seemed like a clear pane of glass, showing the path they had just come from. A one-way mirror—what strange magic!

The path ahead was glass, too, reflective in the manner of the lake

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surface. The scenery to the sides was odder yet; it was all of glass. The brush was greenly tinted glass, and the trees had brownly tinted trunks and greenly foliage. A grayly tinted glass rabbit bounded away as they approached, and a redly tinted glass bird sailed overhead.

"It reminds me of home, a little," Bria said. "Only there everything is of brass."

"We'll get you home when we can," Esk reassured her.

"Oh, I'm not homesick! This is a wonderful adventure. I'm just comparing."

The glassy forest opened out into a glassy plain, with many glass blades. Creamly tinted glass animals glazed on it. They made glassy moo-sounds and moo-ved away, worried by the nonglass intruders.

Glazed? Grazed, Esk realized. Then again—

Then a glassy unicorn charged up, ridden by a glassy man. The man dismounted and strode toward the party, drawing a shining glass blade. He spoke with the sound of breaking cutlery, brandishing the weapon. "Your glass will be ass!"

"No," Esk said, realizing that the glassy man meant mischief.

The man changed his mind. He remounted his glass steed, and they galloped away, sending up a cloud of glass dust.

"Let's move on through here quickly," Latia suggested. "I don't think these folk are friendly."

They hurried on along the path. Soon they came to another sheet of glass. "This should be our exit," Latia said. "But I'll just check. You two can get back to what you were doing." She stepped through the glass, and they watched her walk around a curve in the path beyond.

"What were we doing?" Bria inquired brightly.

"Uh—"

"Oh, yes, I was apologizing to you. I don't remember what for, but better safe than sorry."

"But you don't need to—"

Her warm kiss cut him off. He decided that it was pointless to protest. Bria was correct: she could be very soft when she chose to be.

Yet her body was entirely brass, and some of her ways were brassy too. Any expectations he might have were foolish. He knew this; in fact he was absolutely sure of this. Yet somehow he doubted.

Latia returned, coming around the curve and stepping through the glass. "Yes, it's our path," she reported. "And it seems to be near the ogre fen."

"Oh? How do you know?" Esk asked.

"Oh, nothing specific. Trees twisted into pretzels, boulders cracked

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with hairy fist marks on them, dragons slinking about as if terrified of anything on two legs. Perhaps I am mistaken."

Esk didn't press the case.

They stepped through the glass. Esk turned to look back, and it was a mirror, showing nothing of the glassies beyond. That had been another interesting experience!

Latia had described the terrain accurately. They were definitely in ogre country. Esk felt nervous; he had ogre ancestry, but little direct experience with full ogres. This could be a disaster.

Soon they heard a great crashing, as of trees getting knocked down. An ogre stomped into view, carelessly sweeping brush and rocks aside with one ham fist while picking his monstrous yellow teeth with the tenpenny nails of the other ham hand.

This seemed like a worse and worse idea. This was a plain animal brute! The ogre stood twice Esk's height, and was so ugly that clouds of smog formed wherever it glanced.

"Oooo, what a beast!" Bria murmured admiringly.

The ogre heard her. His shaggy puss swung around to aim at her. "What this me see—one tiny she!" he exclaimed.

"We came to talk to you ogres," Esk called.

Now the ogre spied the rest of the party. "He walk, to talk?" Ogres lacked facility with pronouns, because they were very stupid.

"Yes, we walk to talk," Esk said. "Please take us to your leader."

The ogre scratched his hairy head. Giant fleas dodged out of the way of his dirty nail. "Want to take, no mistake?"

"No mistake," Esk agreed.

"Okay, you say!" And the ogre reached out and grabbed Esk, hauled him up, and jammed him into the huge backpack he wore. Then he grabbed Latia and Bria and treated them similarly,

"I hope you know what he's doing," Latia muttered.

"I hope so too," Esk muttered back.

The ogre strode on, shoving brush and trees out of his way, while the pack jogged violently with his motion. The three clung to the rim and the straps, because getting bounced out would lead to a painful fall.

The ogre arrived at an ogre village. There was a huge fire in its center, beside which sat a great black pot.

"Heat pot!" the ogre bellowed. "Me got!"

"Uh-oh," Esk said. The pot was full of water, but he could see some bones in the bottom. They reminded him of Marrow, and that was not reassuring.

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The ogre swung the pack off and brought it to the pot. He began to invert it.

"No!" Esk cried.

Perplexed, the ogre paused. "No so?"

"We came to talk, not to be cooked!" Esk yelled.

Other ogres had appeared, including several females. If the males were ugly, the females were appalling. "We look, not cook?" one inquired, scratching her head so vigorously that the lice scattered in terror.

"We want your help for the voles!" Esk cried, wishing he had never undertaken this foolish mission.

"Put vole in bowl!" another ogre exclaimed, smacking his lips with a sound that startled the birds from a distant tree.

"We came to impress you with the need for this," Esk said, knowing that the chances of impressing these monsters with anything they had to say was so small as to be worthless.

"Such mess, impress?" the ogre who had brought them demanded, and all of them laughed with a volume and crudity that only their kind could manage. —-

"Yes, impress," Esk continued doggedly. "For your help."

The first ogre thought about that. His cranium heated with the effort, and the fleas got hotfeet and jumped off. Finally he exclaimed: "Me say okay!"

The other ogres, glad to be relieved of the horrible effort of having to think for themselves, bellowed their agreement.

"Wonderful," Latia said. "Now all we have to do is impress them, and our case is won."

"Maybe we can do that," Bria said brightly. "We each have our natures and our talents."

"I'm not sure—" Esk began.

"For example, I can be very hard when I want to be. I'll show you." She climbed out of the pack, which the ogre had set on the ground beside the pot. "Eat me, ogre!" she cried. "Chew me up!"

The ogre did not wait for a second invitation. He snatched her up a moment before three other ham hands reached her, and jammed her feet in his maw. He chomped.

There was a pause. Then slow surprise spread across his puss from the region of his maw. For his teeth had crunched something much harder than bone.

He pulled Bria out and looked at her. She still looked edible. "She sweet; me eat," he concluded, and opened his maw wide and jammed in her head.

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But the teeth crunched again on hard metal. Bria's head remained attached. "Can't you do better than that, ogre?" she cried from the vicinity of his tongue.

Confused, the ogre hauled her out. Immediately another ogre grabbed her and chomped on an arm. It was a powerful chomp; the sound of it rang metallically, startling a passing cloud so that it dropped a little water. A chip of yellow tooth flew out.

"Tough, she, me agree," the ogre confessed.

"Do I impress you?" Bria demanded.

The ogres exchanged glances. They were stupid glances, and traveled very slowly, so this took some time. The surrounding trees tilted away, worried when ogres acted strangely. But eventually they all nodded agreement; they were impressed.

"So that's how it goes," Latia said. "Well, let's see what I can do." She climbed out of the pack and addressed the ogres. "Who is the ugliest among you?" she asked.

An ogress leaned forward. As she did so, all the nearby plants wilted "Me be ugly, me say smugly!"

She certainly was ugly; Esk had never seen a more horrendous puss.

"I can be uglier than you," Latia said.

All the ogres laughed at this, not even needing time for thought. It was obvious that nobody could be uglier than the ogress.

"Ugly is as ugly does," Latia said stoutly. "What can your ugly do?"

The ogress turned and lumbered into her hovel. A flock of bats flew out, looking stunned. She brought out a battered pitcher of milk. She grimaced at it—and the entire pitcher curdled.

Esk gaped. That was ugly indeed! He had thought the stories about that sort of thing were exaggerated.

Then Latia put her hands to her head. She had powder and chalk, and was using these to make up her face.

"What's she doing?" Bria asked.

"She's an actress," Esk said. "All curse fiends are good at drama. They can make themselves quite pretty—and I guess ugly, if they want to."

Latia looked up. Her face, homely to begin with, had been transformed. Now it so ugly it was sickening. But the ogres just looked, undismayed; they were used to ugly.

Then Latia walked over to the big pot. "Lift me up," she said.

Curious, an ogre picked her up and held her over the pot. Latia aimed her face down, and scowled.

The water curdled.

Esk gaped. So did the ogres.

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"Well?" Latia inquired, as the ogre set her down.

"We confess, we impress," an ogre muttered, still staring at the pot. He poked a ham finger in. The water was definitely curdled, not frozen. It clarified in the region of his finger, finding this to be relatively pretty.

Esk remembered how his grandmother, a curse fiend, had emulated an ogress and won his grandfather's love. At last he had a notion how she had done it.

But now it was his turn. What could he do to match what the women had done? If he got mad, he could develop ogre strength for a short time —but that would only match the strength every normal ogre had, not exceed it. That "would not impress them.

Then he realized what would. "Who is stupidest?" he asked.

"Me!" the first ogre cried, forgetting to rhyme.

"Me, me!" another exclaimed, remembering.

There was a chorus of claims, for of course each was proud, and considered himself the stupidest creature of all time. But finally one emerged as dominant: the hugest and slackest-jawed of them all. He was so muscular that when he tried to think, the muscles bulged on his head, but so stupid that his effort to think couldn't even dislodge the fleas; his skull couldn't get hot enough.

"Well, I am stupider than you," Esk asserted. "I'll prove it."

Then he concentrated, and his terror of failure invoked his ogre strength. He marched across and wrapped his arms around the ogre's legs, and picked him up and swung him around, exerting all his ogre power, and cracked the ogre's head into a tree. The tree snapped off, but the ogre wasn't hurt, of course.

The ogre was, however, annoyed. Ogres didn't really like snapping tree trunks with their faces; they preferred ham fists. He snatched up the fallen trunk and swung it toward Esk, ready to smash him down into the ground with a single blow.

Esk stood his ground. "What could be stupider than doing what I did to an ogre like that?" he asked.

The ogres considered. Then, as the tree came down and Esk jumped aside, they started to laugh. The welkin shuddered with their haw-haws, making the sun vibrate and shed a few rays, and even the ogre Esk had attacked joined in. It was a good joke indeed. Nothing could be stupider than that!

"That was a dam fool thing to do!" Latia snapped.

"Totally idiotic!" Bria said.

"Precisely," Esk agreed. "It was the stupidest thing I could have done."

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They were silent, acceding to the sincerity of his claim.

Thus it was that Esk's party impressed the ogres and won their support for the mission. Now all they had to do was survive the ogres* welcoming party and manage to explain how to reach the Vale of the Vole from here. The ogres would help.

Chapter 12. Wiggle

V olney tunneled down toward the wiggle princess, guided by the locator pebble the squiggles had given him. This stone, like the other, was reversed for him; he had to orient on the foulest taste, avoiding the good taste.

The wiggles, as he understood it, were the strongest borers of all the clans of the voles. More correctly, their larvae were. When a pair of wiggles mated, the female went to a suitable patch of rock and made her nest, and when the larvae hatched they drilled out into that rock in an increasing radius until they found good locations for feeding and growth. Very few were lucky; the great majority of the thousands of larvae perished when they used up all their strength in the vain search.

The wiggles' problem was that their tastes were highly selective. Each individual liked only a particular flavor of rock, and would not eat any other. Since there were many hundreds of flavors, and the veins of rock were randomly distributed, the chances of a single wiggle larva happening on its particular flavor were perhaps one in a thousand. There were several thousand larvae in a typical swarm, so normally a few did find their homes. This was the reason that the ground was not overridden with wiggles; a female mated only once, and was thereafter sterile, because all the egg cells in her body were expended in the laying of the larvae. In any given year, there would be only one or two swarms, limited to their particular veins of stone. It might have helped if the stone that was suitable for swarming was the same as what was suitable for eating; then all the larvae would settle down immediately and eat.

But as he reviewed this in his mind, Volney saw why this was not so. If all the thousands of wiggle larvae ate the rock they swarmed in, they would soon finish it, and the vein would become a pulsing mass of partially matured wiggles. None of those would grow to maturity, because the food would be gone. All would perish, and the swarm would die out without descendants. So it was necessary for swarm taste and grow taste

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to differ; the swarm taste was identical for all the larvae, while the grow taste was different for each. The wiggle system really did make sense, when taken on its own terms.

But this particular wiggle princess, the squiggles had explained, was a mutant, or close to it. There was normally a good range of variation in a swarm, with the tastes of individual larva including the most mundane flavors of rock and the most exotic. The flavor required for swarming matched that of the princess's food; since she normally consumed most of the food in the process of maturing, she then had to find similar rock in another place for her nest. This particular female had an extremely exotic taste, so had been unable to find any more of her kind of rock. She could not mate until she was assured of a proper nesting site. Once she found that, she would summon a male, and they would mate, and she would go to the new site to make the nest.

The reason the squiggles, who were fairly canny creatures, thought Volney might be interested, was that this princess's taste was for air-flavored stone. She had found her vein and consumed it, but that seemed to be the only such vein available. Generally wiggles preferred rock-flavored stone; she was a real rarity. But what she might not realize was that there was a good deal of air-flavored stone on the surface, because of the way the air contaminated everything it touched. In fact, a similar taste accounted for those few swarms that occurred at the surface, when a wiggle female happened on the surface and had a matching taste. The creatures of the surface believed that they had to destroy every wiggle larva in the swarm to prevent any from generating new swarms; that was their ignorance. The truth was that their effort made very little difference, apart from some temporary complications caused by the manner the larvae drilled through things, because none of the larvae would have the same taste as their queen-mother. Only those with some taste for deep rock, who managed to reach a suitable vein of it, would survive. All the surface creatures needed to do was ignore the swarm, and it would pass. Thus spake the squiggles, who had been more than satisfied to educate one of their lofty volish cousins on the facts of life at the other end of the spectrum.

All this was news to Volney, who had shared the conventional surface creature alarm about wiggle swarming. That showed that there was some justice to the attitude of the lower species of ground borers: the voles of the Vale had gotten out of touch, and were forgetting the nature of their relatives. He would have to reeducate his companions of the Vale, once this mission was over.

But first he had to get it over, and that was not a sanguine prospect.

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Though a wiggle swarm might not be the disaster he had supposed, it would still be devastating enough in the temporary sense, because of the way the larvae drilled through everything they encountered, leaving their little zzapp holes. Such holes could be quite painful for other living creatures, and even lethal. To loose a swarm on the Vale of the Vole—he remained uncertain how wise that might be, even if the voles and other creatures there had sufficient warning to evacuate the area until the swarm had passed. Concerns of this nature had caused him to dismiss the notion of seeking the wiggle princess out of paw, before. But now, with the failure of the other two members of the party to obtain help, he had to try it. He hoped he wasn't making a terrible error.

Such were his thoughts as he tunneled down at a slant, following the foul taste of the pebble. Periodically he rested and ate some fruit and root from his pouch, for this was an extensive dig. In due course he slept, keeping his whiskers alert for nickelpedes; he had no intention of being trapped that way again!

After two days, the sourness of the pebble practically numbed his tongue. He was getting close!

Indeed, in another moment he broke through to the tunnel network of the princess. He blinked, for it was lighted; bright fungus grew on the walls, illuminating the region in pastel shades. There was a definitely feminine aura here; he would have known immediately that this was the abode of a female even if he had stumbled on it by accident. He paused to prepare himself for the encounter, then sent out a call hi voletalk.

She answered immediately. "Who intrudes on my network?"

Volney was taken aback. Her voice, in vole terms, was dulcet. He had expected a somewhat grating encounter, for his kind had very little contact with her kind.

"I am Volney Vole, seeking perhaps a favor." His words reminded him of the manner his human and centaurian companions hissed their "s" sounds, making their speech artificial; he was of course too polite to mention it to them, realizing that they probably suffered from infirmities of their palates.

She appeared, and he was surprised again. She was a surprisingly petite creature, reminiscent of a female of his own species, with gray fur that seemed to glow. She resembled a wiggle larva not in the slightest; she was definitely of the family of voles.

"And I am Wilda Wiggle," she responded. "I would be more than happy to grant you that favor, but I am not at the moment seeking a mate."

"So I have been informed," he said, surprised at her interpretation. He

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was not her type! A vole and a wiggle, however compatible physically, were incompatible genetically; they could only go through the motions of mating, never producing offspring. "My favor is not of that nature; I am not of your particular species."

"What is it, then?" She fluffed out her fur, looking very pretty. Volney became conscious of the grime on his own fur, because of his two days of boring. He should have taken time to lick himself clean! But he had a remedy: he shifted to his surface suit, his fur turning gray, his eyes brown. Because he had not been boring in that, it was clean.

"I am from the Vale of the Vole, and we have a severe problem. The demons are harassing us, and they have straightjacketed our formerly friendly river, the Kiss-Mee, and made it and the Vale unfriendly. We are seeking some way to drive the demons off, so that we can restore the river to its natural and superior state, so that our Vale may be pleasant again."

"That is very interesting, I'm sure," she said politely. "But I think it is no affair of mine."

"It occurred to me that if a wiggle swarming were to occur in that vicinity, the demons would be discomfited, and would depart, allowing us to restore the river."

"But wiggles do not swarm on the surface," she protested. "There is no decent-tasting rock there!"

"There may be," he said. "According to the squiggles, who bore both in the depths and near the surface, there is a good deal of air-flavored stone at the surface."

"Air-flavored stone?"

"I understand that the flavor you prefer is of that nature."

"I know what I like, but I never knew what it was called. Do you mean to say that there is stone in the flavor I require at the surface?"

"The squiggles seem to think so. When I first encountered them, they mistook me for you, because of the odor remaining on my fur. Therefore it seems that the particular atmosphere of the Vale may be compatible for you."

"You don't smell like my rock," she protested.

"It has largely dissipated now, for I have been some time away from the Vale. But perhaps some smell remains in my pouch." He opened his pouch.

She sniffed. "Yes! That is my flavor! Oh, I wish I had known before! I must mate and go there immediately!"

"There is a complication," he said. "The larvae of a wiggle swarm are damaging to the creatures of a region."

"Damaging? I know nothing of this."

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"That is because your kind normally swarms in limited veins of specialized rock, where no other creatures live. On the surface the range of a swarm becomes virtually unlimited, because the larvae travel through the air, which offers little resistance. They leave holes in the creatures, which is awkward."

"Oh, I see. I suppose that could be awkward, as you say. But why don't you use a containment spell?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"A containment spell. This has been used historically by our kind-on those rare occasions when our territory overlaps that of other creatures. It confines the swarm to a set radius, so that no harm occurs beyond it."

"But doesn't that interfere with your cycle of reproduction? If the larvae cannot travel freely, how can they find the rocks they need?"

"Not any more than a limited vein of swarming rock does," she pointed out. "We wiggles are accustomed to limitations. If the containment spell limits only the radius and not the depth, some larvae will find deep rock. Those that remain on the surface have no chance anyway, as they seek a different flavor."

Volney was highly gratified. "Then it appears we can exchange favors," he said. "Tell me where this containment spell is, and I will tell you where the Vale is."

She was visibly pleased. She fluffed out her fur some more, and gazed at him with eyes that shifted from brown to gray as her fur converted the opposite way. "It is lost at the moment; someone carried it into a gourd and failed to bring it out."

"Would that be on the Lost Path in the gourd?" he asked, remembering something that Esk had said.

"Why, yes, I suppose so. So if you go there, you should be able to find it." She gazed at him with those big eyes, that were now turning from gray to violet, while her coat became pleasantly green. It was evident that the wiggles were more versatile about coloration than the voles were. "You are a handsome vole, Volney."

"The Vale is—are you familiar with the outline of the land of Xanth? —it is in the central part, south of the Gap Chasm, north of Lake Ogre-Chobee."

"I am sure I can find it," she said. Her eyes were brightening to red, while her fur was turning silver. "I am so glad you came to see me!"

There was something about her attitude that nagged him. He looked into her face, and realized what an extraordinarily attractive creature she was. Those blazing red eyes—

Red eyes! That was the color of mating!

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"I must dig on, now," he said quickly. "So nice to have encountered you."

"Remain awhile," she breathed. "We could have such a good time."

He realized now what had happened. Wilda had found a suitable place to nest, because he had told her of the Vale and confirmed it with a smell. That had moved her into her mating phase—and he was the closest male. Wiggles were not the brightest of voles, just as the diggles weren't; they were governed mostly by staggered instincts. First a wiggle found a place to eat and grow; then the males turned to prowling and the females searched for nesting sites. Once the sites were found, the females were ready to mate, and the first male who prowled their way was the one. That normally did not take long, because they put out a mating scent that attracted any males in the vicinity.

The mating scent! That was why she was becoming so attractive! She was starting to generate it, and he was feeling its initial impact. They might be of different species, but it seemed that this type of scent signal was universal. If he remained, he would soon be overwhelmed by it, despite the distinction of species, and—

And it was a trap. Not because there was any danger hi the act itself; it was apt to be quite pleasurable. But because they were of different species.

"Remember, I am a vole, while you are a wiggle," he reminded her.

"Don't tell me you are prudish about cultures," she murmured, rubbing her fur against his. The process sent an electric tingle through his body.

He took a deep breath—and realized that the mating scent was getting to him. He would be overwhelmed all too soon, and then he wouldn't care about species.

"It isn't prudishness," he explained. "It's pointlessness. We would not be fertile; you would produce no swarm."

"I don't understand that," she said. "When one mates, one produces. One swarm; then one joins adult society, and subsequent matings are infertile."

"The genes differ. You need to mate with one of your own species, a wiggle male. I'm sure one will happen along soon." Because the mating scent could circulate through the fissures of the rock, reaching prospective males, who would delay not a moment.

"Let's not wait," she said, nuzzling his neck.

The scent was about to overpower him. Volney knew why this was wrong, but now he was having trouble remembering. Did it really matter? She was such a lovely creature!

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Then he had a desperately bright notion. He took the guide pebble from his mouth and jammed it up his nose. Now the bitterness of it overwhelmed the alluring mating scent, and his mind reverted to normal.

Now it was clear to him why this was a dangerous trap. If he tried to mate with her, it would not take. Therefore she would not become gravid, and her mating instinct would not abate. She would continue her desire to mate, and her scent and appearance would reflect that desire— and he would find himself locked into a perpetual mating role. She would not seek any other while he was there, and no wiggle male would intrude, however eager, for no volish creature was wanton about mating; thus there would be no way for her to become gravid. And no way for him to escape, because a male could not deny the mating scent when it was in full strength.

He would never leave this tunnel, not even to eat. He would gradually starve, unable to wrench himself away, and his last act before he died would be another mating with her. Nature's natural curtailment would not be invoked, because of the genetic incompatibility. Other creatures of Xanth could crossbreed, but not the voles; they were pure strains, kept pure by this limitation.

Well, it might be possible for the mating to take, if enhanced by the elixir of a love spring, or by an accommodation spell. But neither was present on this occasion, so that was of no significance.

"Don't you like me?" Wilda inquired.

He did not want to affront her, because he wanted her cooperation when she did successfully breed with one of her own kind. A wiggle swarm, suitably contained, should banish the demons from the Vale, and certainly it would rum the demons' dikes and let the water out of the Kill-Mee channels. "I simply want what is best for you," he said. "And that is a mating with one of your own species. I must go locate the containment spell." And that was most of the truth—about all she might be capable of assimilating.

"I really don't understand," she said, She tickled his nose with a whisker.

The tickle caused Volney to sneeze. The foul pebble flew from his nose, and was lost in the dust. Suddenly he was exposed to the full impact of the mating odor.

It was time for desperate measures. Volney held his breath and leaped for the wall. He jammed on his external claws and dug at the wall with extraordinary vigor. The rock powdered under the magic of the talons, and a new hole developed.

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"What's the matter?" Wilda asked. "Did I say something to offend you? I apologize!"

"Don't apologize!" Volney gasped, remembering one more thing Esk had mentioned. Some folk had a most intimate mode of apology!

"But I only want to be nice to you!" she pleaded.

As Volney breathed, some of the scent reached him. Why not simply turn back and—?

But his rational mind still had enough sway to dominate—as long as he held his breath again. He continued his digging, getting his nose into the new rock, filtering out the scent.

"Ah, you wish to flirt," she said. "I will play! I will catch you!"

"Yes, catch me!" Volney gasped. He could dig his way out of her range, and before she found him, a wiggle male would pass within range of her scent, and would preempt the mating. Then, afterwards, she would remember the Vale, and feel no outrage at Volney's abrupt retreat.

But he had forgotten what good borers the wiggles were. Wilda started her own tunnel, parallel to his, pacing him, and she readily matched his progress. He had no more strength pills; he could not enhance himself with a spell to outdistance her. When she grew tired of playing, she would loop her tunnel and cut off his, and merge the two; and then her scent would overwhelm him, and they would be locked in the futile mating effort.

What could he do? She was tunneling above him, preventing him from going for the surface. She might not be bright about the details of genetics, but she was canny about tunneling, as all the members of the great family of voles were. It was inherent; any related creature who could not tunnel well was soon squeezed out of the ground. One of the shames of the surface creatures was surely their inadequacy as tunnelers.

Maybe he could double back, fooling her, and then head for the surface before she could catch him. She wouldn't brave the surface until after mating; it wasn't the wiggle way. He hoped.

He widened his tunnel, making room to turn his body around, then scurried back. It was much faster reexcavating refuse rocks than boring through solid virgin stone, and he made three times the speed. He soon intersected her original suite and scrambled through it.

"How nice," she murmured, wiggling her whiskers. "You have returned."

Volney held his breath and skidded to a stop. She had anticipated him! He could almost feel the scent caressing his fur. He spun about and plunged back into his tunnel. Soon he was back at its end, boring forward. Could he angle it up now, before she followed him back here?

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He could not. She was already angling her tunnel toward his; he could tell by the sound of it.

Then he had a dark notion. He knew one place she wouldn't go!

Abruptly, he angled down. He had the excellent volish spatial memory that enabled him to orient on any region he had visited before. He knew where to go.

Wilda paced him, not closing in, evidently curious about this new ploy. She knew he couldn't dig down forever; eventually he would have to turn up again, and then she would end the flirtation and close in for the finale.

Wouldn't it be easier, he wondered, just to let her catch him? But then he realized that it was the scent influencing him. Every time he bored through a fracture zone, a suggestion of that scent filtered through, and now it was filtering through the fracture zones of his will to resist and centering on his desire. If he let her catch him, he would never make the rendezvous with his friends on the surface, and the Vale of the Vole would not be saved. He had to fight on through!

Now he was nearing his current destination: the living lava flow. If he played this too close, he would suffer another type of fate; and as he fried to death, he would wish he had remained with the wiggle princess after all. For if he died in the lava, then Wilda would mate elsewhere, and go to the Vale—and there would be no containment spell.

He felt the heat. He did not know the full extent of the flow, but did know where his prior tunnel to it was. He angled across to intersect that, hoping that Wilda did not realize what he had in mind.

Her tunneling slowed as she felt the heat of the lava; this was not a region she liked! She was hesitating, while he ground on. Good; he didn't like this region either, and didn't want to go any further into it than absolutely necessary.

Then she came to her decision. Her tunnel angled to intercept his.

Volney increased his effort. He was tired from the two days of solid boring he had done to reach the princess, but he knew that he had to draw on any strength he had remaining. If she caught him, all was lost.

The heat of the rock increased. This made the boring easier for his magic talons, but also worried him; he was approaching the lava from the other side, and could not be sure of its limit.

Despite his effort, Wilda was gaining on him. Before he could locate his tunnel of several days ago, she cut him off. Her tunnel broke through into his, and her nose appeared before his nose.

"This is fun," she said. "But I don't like this region. Let's go back to

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my suite and make love." This was, in the circumstances, a virtually irresistible offer.

Volney tried to hold his breath, but his effort of boring had him gasping; he could not stop breathing now. He knew he had lost. He breathed in her fragrance.

But, strangely, he felt no overwhelming desire for her now. She was pretty, and she was nice; he found no fault in her. He did not blame her for her nature. In another situation he would have liked to associate with her more thoroughly. But he no longer felt the compulsion to mate with her. What had happened?

The scent that was strong in his nostrils now was that of the lava. It was very close, and the rock through which they were tunneling was hot.

That was it: the lava was burning off the mating scent! He had been saved by the flow!

"Princess Wilda," he said gently. "I like you, and find you most attractive. But I am not of your species, and I would do you no favor by attempting to mate with you. I must return to the surface to look for the containment spell, so that your swarm may flourish in the Vale without hurting any other creatures there. Go and find a mate of your own kind, and take my best wishes with you."

Her whiskers quivered unhappily. "You do not wish to mate with me?"

"I want to, but know it would only harm you," he said, and realized that he was not being insincere. "I am doing what is best. I will always remember you, with deepest regret for what I cannot do, for you are a delight among females."

Then he resumed his tunneling, heading up at a steep angle. She squatted where she was for a moment; then, forlornly, she turned and moved back toward her suite.

It was done. Somehow he was not thrilled. If only he could have yielded . . .

It took him three days to reach the surface, because he was tired; he suspected the fatigue was emotional as much as physical. The merest suggestion of that mating scent clung to his fur, and every so often he got a faint whiff, and it sent him into a daydream of regret. The princess was a wiggle, true, but she had been most delectable; now that his decision had been made, he was free to regret, endlessly, what might have been, foolish as that would have been. He could appreciate Esk's problem with the brassie girl; the sweetest temptation could be that which was known to be the most foolish.

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He had one day remaining to make the rendezvous when he broke surface. It was not that far away, so he collapsed and slept.

On the next day he trudged on to Castle Roogna, and to the orchard. There were Esk and Chex, and the brassie girl and the skeleton man and the old curse fiend, and of course little Ivy, who dashed up and hugged him exactly as if he were one of her pets. The odd thing was that he discovered that he liked it; he felt much more volish in that moment.

They exchanged histories. It turned out that Esk had gotton the ogres to agree to help; already the gross humanoids were organizing in their dull fashion for their tromp to the Vale. Chex had gotten the winged monsters to agree, too; they would appear in due course.

Then Volney, with some misgiving, explained what he had accomplished. "A wiggle princess!" Ivy exclaimed with the characteristic hu-manoid problem with the "s." "How excssiting!"

Chex was far more sober. "A wiggle sswarm?" she asked, alarmed. "That'ss quite a rissk!"

"We sshall have to ssearch for the containment spell on the Losst Path," Esk said.

That led to a discussion of ways and means. The gourd was very chancy; who should enter, by the zombie route, and who should stay behind?

"I don't want to enter that way," Bria protested. "It might get me permanently fouled up."

"Readily ssolved," Chex said. "Let Essk return you to the Losst Path; then he will look for you from the insside, and resscue you again. Then you will be able to come to thiss world all the way physsically, or to return to your ccity. What iss your ccity called, inssidentally?"

"Brassilia," Bria responded. "But I may not want to return there."

"It will be your choicse, of coursse," the centaur said. Volney could tell by her manner that Bria's hesitation was no surprise to the centaur. Of course the brassie girl wanted to remain here; she was casting her scent for Esk. That was obvious to every member of the party except, of course, Esk himself.

Chex turned to the skeleton. "And you, Marrow—do you wissh to rissk the loop back in via the zombie gourd?"

"I confesss to developing an interesst in thiss world," the skeleton said. "I am in no russh to return to the haunted garden. Sso I would like to travel with you, if you concur."

"But you rissk a convolussion whosse nature we do not properly un-dersstand," she reminded him.

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Marrow shrugged. He was very good at that, because of the articulation and exposure of his bones. "It iss an interessting convolussion."

"Very interessting," the centaur agreed. "That makess our party four, I think that iss enough. Latia and Bria can wait here, and if we do not return in a week—"

"Then I will go in after you," Bria said. "And Latia will inform the voless of the Vale that the ogress and winged monssterss and wiggless are coming, sso they can prepare."

That settled it. Tomorrow their party of four would set out for the huge zombie gourd Chex knew about. Volney knew it had to be done, but he was ill at ease. The notion of physically entering the gourd appalled him. But not as much as the notion of letting his folk of the Vale down.

Chapter 13. Dreams

It took them one day to reach the zombie gourd, because the others could not travel as rapidly as Chex. They planned for a journey of two days within the gourd to find the containment spell, and the same time to return, giving them one day's leeway. The margin was the same, but the stakes were rising; the Vale of the Vole might well be hostage to their success.

Chex brought out the pathfinder spell. Esk had used it for the path to the ogre fen, and it would not work for him again, so Chex was taking her turn now. "The easiest and safest path for four folk to the lost containment spell," she enounced carefully. Esk recognized the wisdom of that; the gourd had its own difficulties and dangers, such as entrapment on the Lost Path. He had asked for the shortest path to the ogre fen, and it had been slightly harrowing in places; the gourd was bound to be worse.

The path appeared before them. As they had anticipated, it led into the huge peephole. Esk was nervous about this, because of his prior experience with the gourd, but he reminded himself that this was not the same situation; when they entered physically, they could depart physically, on their own initiative. Also, they had the guidance of the path. And of course he had not been hurt before, just confused. He had even emerged with a couple of new friends.

But the others were leaping in, and he had to follow before he got left out. He leaped—and found himself in the midst of rotting plants. It was as if some monstrous blight had descended on this glade and caused the vegetation to sicken and die.

"Vombie plantv," Volney muttered, evidently as bothered as Esk was.

Chex was showing the way along an overgrown and slushy path between depressions. Esk saw a fallen headstone, and realized that these were sunken graves, with the sickly plants crowding them. He did not like this place at all!

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"Watch the snake," Chex called.

Esk looked ahead, and saw a horrendous zombie serpent striking at Marrow's bone leg. But its aim wasn't good; it bit a plant instead. The skeleton walked on, unperturbed. He was back in his original state, having doffed the suit Latia had made for him at some point; indeed, it seemed like a pointless affectation for him.

Volney paused, watching the snake. He started to pass it, and it drew back again to strike; he scooted on ahead, and the snake missed and bit the plant again. It really was not particularly bright or swift, as snakes went, though perhaps was up to par as zombies went.

The oddest thing was that the plant was now becoming quite healthy. The venom seemed to enhance it.

"Zombies are afraid of health," Chex called back. "So the bite threatens to deliver what they fear. But we aren't zombies, and we can't be sure what it would do to us."

Indeed they could not be sure! Esk timed the snake, and zipped on by it, and ran to catch up with the others.

They were now at a region of slashing knives. "This is the route I took before," Chex said. "The path leads here, but it must diverge somewhere, because I was going to Centaur Isle then." She drew a knife from her pack, and threw it into the gantlet.

There was an instant melee as the knives attacked the intruder knife. They cut each other up in the process, going wild, and soon all of them were broken. The four of them should be able to pass this way—but the marks of the pathfinder's path no longer seemed to go here.

Chex nodded. "It changes; the knife fight is merely a key, not a part of the path." She set out along a new path that proceeded back the way they had come.

The decaying vegetation had changed to decaying stone and other junk. Chex came to a green rock that was so far gone it resembled a fungus. She lifted a forehoof and struck it against this rock.

The thing flew apart. Where the pieces landed, they sank into the ground, and awful green fire rose up, spreading to the ground itself, consuming it. Before long something showed beneath: a platform of wood that did not burn.

Chex knocked the near end of the wood, and it dropped, and the far end swung up. There was a hollow beneath, with wooden steps leading down.

"Now the path should lead away," Chex remarked.

But it did not. The wear marks that signaled the proper route proceeded down those steps.

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"I admit I was curious about this," the centaur said. "But it means the route will no longer be familiar to me. At least this has been enough to show you the way of it; the path can be devious."

Indeed it could bel "But reasonably safe and easy," Esk repeated. He wished he knew what was considered reasonable in the strange world of the gourd! If striking zombie snakes represented safety, what would represent danger?

Chex stepped down into the pit, somewhat awkwardly. It was evident that centaurs were not made for stairs. There was a landing below, large enough for the four of them. Beyond it, a broad lighted passage extended, and this was clearly the path.

They lined up four abreast and walked onward. This really wasn't very bad, so far; maybe the path was going to be easy by human definition.

Then they came to a rusty barred gate across the passage. Behind it stood four grotesque zombies. One was a rotting man, another a decaying centaur, another a moldy vole, and the last a tattered skeleton.

"This has abruptly become specific," Chex remarked. "Something knows we are here."

"I am not reawured," Volney said.

"It is not unknown," Marrow said. "We of the gourd are animations of the concepts of bad dreams. Now that you—and it seems I—have entered this realm physically, those dreams are coalescing. I suspect this will become rather unpleasant for you."

"Not for you?" Chex inquired.

"I do not dream, of course, so cannot have a bad dream."

"But that figure before you looks very much like a spoiled skeleton."

"Yes. This is odd. It must have mistaken me for a living creature. I am not certain whether to feel flattered or insulted."

"But what do we do now?" Esk asked. "Break through the gate? It has no opening, and the bars are too closely set to let us through."

"If, as I conjecture, these are animations from our minds, it will be necessary for us to face them directly," Marrow said. 'They are of course intended to frighten us away. Bad dreams lose their power when the subject fails to flee in terror." He glanced around. "I hope you will not repeat that in the outside world. Trade secret, you know."

Esk would have laughed, if his knees hadn't felt so weak.

"Then I shall face my doppelganger," Chex said boldly. She stepped up to the gate.

The zombie centaur stepped up similarly, as if it were a mirror image. It met her right at the gate. She put out her right hand, and it matched her with its left. She touched it—and her hand passed through its hand.

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No, not through—into. The two merged, and disappeared.

Startled, Chex drew back her arm. So did the zombie, and both hands reappeared.

"Like water!" Esk exclaimed. "Like putting your hand into water! It disappears, and so does the reflection."

"That must be it," Chex agreed grimly. She spread her wings part way, as she tended to do when wrestling with a concept, and the zombie did the same.

Then she stepped forward, into the gate. The doppelganger duplicated the motion.

They merged. Their two front sections disappeared into each other, leaving a two-reared beast. Then the rears merged, leaving only the two briefly swishing tails. Finally, the tails drew together in the center and were gone.

Then a picture formed, superimposed over the gate. It was of Chex, galloping through a forest, casting worried glances back over her shoulder. What was she fleeing from?

She entered a field. Now the pursuit came into view. It consisted of a herd of centaurs: males, females, and young ones, brandishing spears and bows. They seemed intent on killing her!

The field terminated in a rough slope strewn with rocks. Chex had to slow to avoid cracking her hooves against the rocks, and the pursuing centaurs gained. One aimed his bow.

The descent became sharper, until she could go no farther without losing her footing entirely. Beyond was a drop-off to a raging river. There was no chance of fording that; if she tried, she would be dashed to death against the rocks in the river. Her plight and her terror were manifest.

"It's only a vision!" Esk called. "It can't hurt you! Just a bad dream!"

Chex heard him. She glanced at him with realization—and abruptly was back in the passage with them, the dream gone.

The zombie centaur was back on its side of the gate, unchanged. The way remained barred.

Chex was breathing hard; she had evidently had quite a scare. "You saw it?" she asked.

"We saw it," Esk agreed. "You were being chased by centaurs."

"They condemned me because of my wings," she said. "They regarded me as a freak!"

"Exactly as the real centaurs do," Esk agreed.

"Then that is your deepest fear or shame," Marrow said. "The worst dream the night mares can bring you: rejection by your own kind."

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She shuddered. "Yes. I try not to think about it, but it does hurt terribly. I want to be part of my species, and I cannot be."

"You must face it down," Marrow said.

"How can I do that? They will kill me if I do not flee them!"

"But a dream death is not a real death," Esk reminded her.

"I hope you're right," she said grimly. "Don't wake me, this tune."

She marched back into her doppelganger. The two disappeared again into each other, and the dream reappeared.

Chex was fleeing through the forest, heading for the field. But this time she forced herself to stop, and to turn and face her pursuers. "You have no right to harass me like this!" she cried. "I am what I was foaled to be! It is no fault of mine!"

"Freak! Freak!" they chorused. "Death to all freaks!"

Then they stabbed her with their spears, and shot her with their arrows, and carved her with their knives, until only a shuddering mass of flesh remained.

Chex woke screaming. The second dream had been worse than the first! The threatened violence had been no bluff.

Esk jumped over to her and opened his arms. She reached down and clutched him to her, heedless of the physical or social awkwardness. "Oh, it was horrible!" she cried. "I died! They killed me, and it hurt, and I was mutilated and dead!"

"Terrible," Esk agreed, holding her as well as he could, though her pectorals were squeezing against his neck.

"That was evidently an improper way to face that fear," Marrow said.

"First I fled, then I faced them!" Chex sobbed hysterically. "Both were wrong. What else can I do?"

"That iv for uv to convider," Volney said. "Vhe hav tried the ekv-tremev; what remainv between?"

Chex disengaged from Esk. "Here I'm acting like a silly filly! Of course this is a problem to be analyzed and solved. I was reacting in blacks and whites, when reality is generally in shades of gray. But the dream had such verisimilitude, it overwhelmed me!"

"Such what?" Esk asked, daunted by the six-syllable word she had used.

"It was realistic," she clarified. "It made me believe I was there even though I knew better."

"It made me believe you were there, at first," Esk said.

"And I thank you for your support," she said. "I am coming to appreciate the value of friendship."

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"Friendv," Volney said, nodding in his emulation of human idiom. "Could we join you there, and oppove the ventaurv?"

"Say, yes!" Esk exclaimed. "Four are better than one! And Marrow could give them a real start!"

"I appreciate the offer," Chex said. "But I wouldn't want to put you into that sort of danger. Perhaps you could not actually be killed, but believe me, you could be hurt; I felt that pain! In any event, I believe this is my personal challenge to surmount; if 1 should do it with help, it wouldn't count."

They saw the justice in her position. "But if you can't fight them, or reason with them, or escape them, what can you do?" Esk asked.

"Reject them," Marrow said.

Chex's eyes widened. "I think you're right! I was treating them seriously both times, and so they had power. I gave them that power!"

"Yet you knew they were figments of a dream," Esk said. "They still attacked you. I'm not sure that just telling them you reject them will do any good."

"No, it won't," she agreed. "I have to prove it. And, since this is a dream, I think I know how." She faced the gate. "Wish me luck."

"Mountains of it!" Esk said.

"Cavev of it," Volney agreed.

"Rib cages of it," Marrow said.

She nerved herself visibly, then strode into the gate. She disappeared against the zombie centaur, and the vision formed.

This time she ran to the field, then braked and whirled. The horde of centaurs charged up, brandishing their weapons.

"You have no authority here!" she cried. "This is my dream! I reject you and all you stand for—narrowness, intolerance, violence! That is not my way, and should not be yours."

They charged on her, weapons flashing. Oh, no! Esk thought. It wasn't working.

Then Chex spread her wings and leaped into the air. The wings stroked powerfully, the downblast stirring up a cloud of dust and blowing back the manes of the centaurs. She rose above them, slowly, grandly.

She was flying!

The centaurs gaped. This was entirely unexpected!

"I reject your land-bound ways!" Chex cried. "You have no wings, so you condemn those who do! That is your fundamental failing—sour grapes!"

Now the centaurs began to recover. They lifted their weapons—and Chex accelerated her wing beats and launched up into the sky, quickly

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passing out of range. "I don't need your approval; I don't fear your condemnation!" she called. "I have my own life to live! I leave you behind!"

Then she woke. She was back on the floor, panting, flushed with victory, and the dream was gone.

"But in real life, I still can't fly," she said sadly. "I recognized that the terms of the dream were different, and that if I had awful liabilities, I also had wonderful abilities. They go together; the extremes are feasible, in the dream. So I drew on the positive, and vanquished the negative. And do you know, it's true! I don't need the centaurs anymore! I'm free of my liability of false desire; I no longer want to be like them or accepted by them. I want to explore my own horizons, which are so much greater than theirs! Their reality is valid, for them; I could not flee them as long as I desired their acceptance, nor oppose them as long as I knew that their dream presentation was merely an exaggeration of their actual way. I could not defeat them on their own turf. But when I invoked my turf, they were helpless!"

She paused, realizing that the others were staring at her. "What's the matter? Do you disagree?"

Esk found his voice. "You're through," he said.

"I—" She looked around. "Why, I'm on the other side of the barrier!"

"Your victory," Marrow agreed.

"I came to terms with my worst fear or shame," she agreed. "It no longer haunts me. The dream was only the representation of it. The barrier was only another representation. Neither exists for me anymore." And she walked through the gate without hindrance, turned, and walked through it again. The metal bars had no substance.

Esk stepped up to touch the bars—and his doppelganger matched him, reaching out to meet his hand from the other side. Esk jerked his hand back; that barrier remained real for him!

"The vombie ventaur iv gone," Volney said. "But the otherv remain."

"We must conquer our own bad dreams," Esk said.

"I vhall tackle mine," the vole said, and marched into the gate.

The zombie vole met him snout-on. The two merged, and the dream formed. It was of a tunnel whose walls glowed prettily with colored fungus. He entered it by boring through the wall, the magic metal talons on his front feet gouging through the rock as if it were mud.

Another vole was there—no, Esk realized that there were subtle distinctions of form and coloration. It was a female, and not of precisely Volney's species. Her eyes and fur changed color as his did, but she differed too.

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"The wiggle princess," Chex murmured. She had crossed the barrier again and now stood beside him.

Oh. Esk thought of the demoness Metna, and began to understand the nature of the vole's deepest shame

Volney came to stand before the wiggle She approached, and they sniffed noses. There was a pleasant smell, as of blooming flowers. It reminded him somehow of Bna Brassie, and that was funny, because she was made of metal and smelled of polished brass.

Volney jerked away, and the dream ended. He was back in the passage, on the near side of the gate. "I wav afraid it would be that," he said.

"You desire the wiggle princess," Chex said

"But the trap—"

"Yes, you explained," the centaur said "But you avoided her, so you should have no shame in that connection. You did what you had to do, and we are on this quest for the containment spell because of it."

"Yet I came so clove to failing," Volney said. "Because of my un-worthmevv "

"Your what?" Esk asked. "You always struck me as a fine figure of a vole."

"I am not," Volney said. "The rejection by her kind that Chekv feared —iv alvo mine."

"This requires explanation," Chex said. "Aren't you on a mission for your folk?"

"I am—but it iv not becauve I am the bevt for it, but becauve I am ekvpendable."

"Expendable?" Chex asked. "How could that be?"

Volney sighed. "It iv the time for the baring of vecret vhamev. I was a vuitor for an ekvtremely vohvh female vole, but vhe turned invtead to another."

"An extremely vohsh vole turned you down?" Chex asked. "Surely that is no fault of yours!"

"Yev it iv," Volney insisted. "Volve mate for hfe, and when I wav rejected, I became ineligible for any vubvequent matvh. There wav nothing for me to do but depart."

"One rejection makes you—taboo?" Chex asked. "That hardly seems reasonable."

"You are not a vole," he reminded her. "Think of me av having vprouted wmgv."

"Point made," she agreed, grimacing.

"But then you were going—and helping your folk," Esk said. "Where is the shame in that?"

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"I did not undertake the mivvion for the good of the Vale, but av a pretekvt to depart," Volney explained.

"Still, you did plan to complete it, didn't you?"

"Yev But when I met Wilda—"

"You were tempted to forget your mission," Chex concluded "Yes, I can appreciate that But you did resist that temptation, so there is no shame "

"The vhame iv in the temptation," Volney said "I vhould not have been"

"I doubt it," Marrow said "You resisted that temptation both in life and in the dream."

Chex nodded "I think you have not yet faced your deepest fear or shame"

Volney sighed with an exhalation of 'Vs." "Then muvt I fave it now," he said. He walked forward into his doppelganger vole.

The scene re-formed. Dulcet Wilda Wiggle came forward to meet him, sniffing noses. The smell of flowers grew strong.

Volney hesitated, then took the plunge If seduction by her was not his deepest potential shame, what was? He moved in to embrace her in the vohsh way.

Her nose wiggled She was smelling something A picture formed above them, a scene within the scene, a female vole turning away from the Volney of the scenelet.

"She realizes he is a rejectee," Chex murmured.

Abruptly the wiggle turned away The scent of flowers faded. Volney was left there—rejected again

Abruptly he woke, back beside them in the passage. Now his deepest concern was clear, that his basic unworthiness as a vole would have alienated the wiggle princess, had he chosen to dally with her. Then he would have been guilty twice- of betraying his mission and his Vale, and of failing at that

"There is only one solution," Chex said "Complete your mission. Then if there is fault, it is none of yours, and you need have no further shame The wiggle princess would not reject you then, but if she did, you would know that it was her error, not your own "

"But I am guilty of unvolivh weaknew," he protested

"Only in your bad dream," she said "You are afraid of weakness, you have not practiced it in life."

Volney shrugged Then he marched back into the zombie vole. The dream formed—and dissipated immediately, leaving Volney on the far side of the gate

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"Now you believe," Chex said. "The dream has lost its power over you. Thus it was unable even to form."

"Now I believe," Volney agreed. "I will complete my mivvion, regard-lew of temptation or rejecvion."

Esk took a breath. "My turn," he said.

The zombie man came to meet him. Esk merged—and his dream opened out.

It consisted of a swirling universe of stars and dust and moons, all moving in the splendor of their separate trajectories, rather than being fixed in their shell the way they were in reality. The moon, instead of being a mass of green cheese, was in this weird vision a monstrous ball of cratered rock. And, strangest of all, the Land of Xanth was but a peninsula on the surface of a giant mundane sphere. Esk would have known that this was a hallucination even if he hadn't already been aware that it was only a dream!

The scene kept coming toward him, the detail expanding, until it became a map of Xanth, on which he was standing. Then a parallel picture formed, identical to the first, except that Esk was not in it.

That was all. He stood disembodied, studying the two pictures, one with his image and the other without. There was absolutely no other distinction between them.

He screamed. In a moment he found himself back in the passage. Chex hurried across and embraced him, much as he had embraced her between her dreams, comforting him as his horror slowly faded.

"But what doev it mean?" Volney asked, perplexed. "I vaw no monvterv, no vhame. Merely two venev."

"There was no difference!" Esk cried. "None at all!"

"True," Chex murmured. "But this was no horror to us. Why should it be to you?"

As he thought about it, Esk came to understand it. "I am in one, and not in the other—and there is no difference. I make no difference at all!"

"Yes, Esk," Chex said.

"It doesn't matter whether I live or die," Esk said. "Xanth is just the same. What justification is there for my existence?"

"That is only your fear, not the reality," Chex reminded him.

"But maybe it is reality!" he argued. "I am nothing and nobody; what I do doesn't matter. I realize now that I set out to see the Good Magician because I needed some proof that I had some importance, some mission in life. Getting rid of the demoness, saving my folks from her—that was only a pretext. I hoped the Good Magician would somehow—make me worthwhile."

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"But you are worthwhile!" Chex said. "How can you doubt that?"

"I tell myself I am," Esk said. "But deep inside, I'm not sure that it is so. What have I done to make any difference at all to Xanth? If I had never lived, would it matter to anyone or anything? The picture with me in it is just the same as the one without me."

She considered. "I suppose that could be. But it would be similarly true for all of us. Objectively viewed, we may ah1 be unworthy. But I think there is an answer. You don't have to settle for what you are at this moment. You can work to make a difference. This is what Volney will do. Then the pictures will change."

Esk nodded. "When you say it, it does seem to make sense. But how can I make a difference? Xanth is so big, and I'm so small."

"How much difference would the Kiss-Mee River make?"

"A lot. But that's Volney's mission. We're only helping."

"But if he can't do it without you?"

"And if I could help him do it—then there would be something that would not be the same without me," Esk said, liking the notion.

He walked back into the gate. The zombie met him, and merged, and the dream came again.

"I am nothing now," Esk said. "But I can make a difference, and I'm going to try. If I succeed, I will be something. That's all I can do—all any person can do. To make an honest try. If that's not enough, then nothing's enough, and it's not worth having any bad dreams about."

The pictures shimmered. Then something wriggled on the one that had his image. A river that was almost straight on the other map was assuming curvature here.

That was all. It was only a dream, but it gave Esk tremendous satisfaction. He knew what he had to do to abolish his deepest fear. To guarantee that his life had some bit of meaning. His life was not necessarily empty until he failed to accomplish that mission.

The vision dissipated. Esk found himself standing on the other side of the gate.

Only Marrow remained on the original side. "It is my turn," the skeleton said. "But I hesitate."

"That is understandable," Chex said. "We have all had very difficult experiences."

"I have no concern about a bad dream," Marrow said. "I do not dream, because I am not alive. My concern is that either there will be no reaction, because there is nothing in me to generate it—no fear, no shame, no guilty secret—or that my attempt to cross will trigger an error that will blow the program."

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"Do what?" Esk asked.

"This trial is geared to living folk, with dreams," Marrow explained. "If one without dreams enters it, the mechanism could clash, unable to orient, and the entire setting could be compromised or destroyed. I am uncertain whether this should be risked."

"He has a point," Chex murmured. "He is a creature of the bad dreams; how can he have one of his own?"

"What happens," Esk asked, "if the program, ah, blows?"

"This entrance to the framework of the gourd would be closed off," Marrow said. "You might be trapped here, with no route of escape. Or there could be emotional or physical damage to the three of you."

"Marrow iv a good guide," Volney said. "We may not complete the quevt without hiv advive."

"Then maybe we should risk it," Esk said.

Chex nodded. "Maybe we should. There is after all no indication of trouble; there is a skeletal zombie ready. Come on through, Marrow."

The skeleton shrugged. "It is, as the saying goes, no skin off my sinus cavity." He marched into the gate. The zombie skeleton met him, and the two merged.

A picture started to form. It showed Marrow, standing in the passage, exactly as he was. Then it dissipated, and Marrow was standing back where he had started.

"It tried to make a dream for him!" Esk exclaimed.

"And found nothing on which to fasten," Marrow said.

"I'm not sure of that," Chex said. "There had to be something even to start it, and I think we should understand what it is. It could be significant."

"He was bounced without a dream," Esk said. "It thought there was going to be a dream, so it started it, but then it found out there wasn't, so it ended."

"But there was a dream," she insisted. "A simple one, but nevertheless a dream. That suggests that Marrow does possess some reality on our terms."

Now Volney was interested. "What could vuch a reality be? He hav no life."

"The picture was just of him, unchanged," Esk said. "For a moment I thought it was him, until it faded."

"Indeed it was me," Marrow said. "Since I have no life, I have no dream. It was just a picture of me as I am."

"Yes, it was," Chex agreed. "Therefore, that must represent your deepest fear or shame."

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"I have no fear or shame," Marrow repeated.

"That may be why you were rejected," Chex said.

"Because it accepts only those who can reconcile their dreams, and I had none to reconcile," Marrow said, nodding his skull.

"No. Because you refused to come to terms with it."

That amused Esk. "Why should he come to terms with what doesn't exist?"

"Because it does exist," she said firmly. "Had it not existed, he would have passed through without challenge. But there is a zombie doppel-ganger waiting for him, and he can't pass until he overcomes that deepest spectre within him."

"There is nothing within me," Marrow protested. "My skull and rib cage are completely hollow, as you can see." He knocked on his skull with a knucklebone, and the sound was hollow.

"So was the skeleton in the dream," she agreed.

"You mean he's afraid of himself?" Esk asked incredulously.

"Perhaps." She gazed at Marrow. "Are you?"

"What could there possibly be to fear in that?" Marrow asked, irritated.

"You are avoiding an answer."

"But there is nothing in me to fear by me," the skeleton said. "I exist only to generate fear in living human folk. I have no other reality."

"So your dream suggests," Chex said. "Does that please you?"

"Why should it? I have no right to be pleased or displeased. It is merely my situation."

"Again, you avoid an answer."

"How do you think I feel?" Marrow demanded.

"I'd be pretty upset," Esk said. "Here my deepest fear was that I counted for nothing in Xanth, so my life may have no meaning. You aren't even alive. That's one step below me, even."

"It would be foolish of me to wish for life," Marrow said curtly. "It involves messiness."

"How can a creature who isn't alive be foolish?" Chex asked.

"Life is just a mass of awkwardnesses about consuming substance and eliminating substance," Marrow said. "Of discomfort and pain and shame. The end is exactly what I already am: dead. It is pointless."

"But life has feeling," Chex said. "And you have feeling. Is your deepest fear that you can never be any more than you are now?"

"But I can never be more!"

"Why don't you try the gate again," she suggested.

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Marrow shrugged and walked back into the zombie. This time a more substantial picture formed—of him, as he was.

"But I don't want to be like this forever!" Marrow cried abruptly. "And maybe I don't have to bel If Esk can make of himself something worthwhile, why can't I aspire to be more than a spook?"

The dream held for a moment more, then faded. And Marrow was on the near side of the gate.

"I will hug you," Chex said. She did so.

Marrow seemed dazed. Esk could understand why. The skeleton was coming alive, at least in aspiration. That was an enormous advance.

Esk marveled, privately. He understood how living folk could become dead, but not how dead folk could become alive. Was this a genuine process, or merely an illusion spawned by this realm of dreams? Suppose Marrow only thought he was starting to dream, and therefore to live?

"Let's move on," Chex said briskly. "We now have better notions of our motives and natures, but it will come to little unless we find that containment spell."

All too true! They moved on along the passage, which seemed brighter now.

"No more rot," Volney remarked, sniffing the floor. "We have pawed beyond the vombie region."

"I am glad of that!" Chex said. "Not merely because I am not partial to rotting flesh, but because this means that this is indeed an access to the whole of the world of the gourd, not merely the zombie segment. This path is proving itself."

Then the passage terminated in a blank wall. The path went right up to that wall and into it, but they could not pass through that solid stone.

"What now?" Esk asked, dismayed.

Chex passed her hands along the wall, feeling for crevices or loose panels, while Volney sniffed at the bottom for any evidence of impenna-nence. Both found nothing. The wall remained completely solid and immovable.

"Any notions, Marrow?" Esk asked wryly.

"Perhaps. There is obviously a way through this barrier, as there was through the last. We have but to find that way."

Esk suppressed a sharp response about restatements of the obvious. "Then what is your notion?"

"This is the realm of dreams. Perhaps a dream is needed for the wall."

"You mean if we dream we can pass it, then we can?"

"More likely we shall have to handcraft a dream, as is generally done here."

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Chex became interested. "How does one handcraft a dream of passing through a wall?"

"One designs it and implements it," the skeleton said seriously.

Chex showed signs of suppressing the same irate response that Esk had. "Could you be more specific?"

"Certainly. It is possible that if we portray a passage through the wall, it will operate as portrayed.**

Chex seemed doubtful, but she scouted about the passage until she found a fragment of stone that was black and crumbly. She used this to mark a black line on the wall. She extended it into a crude picture of a door. Then she pushed against the door. Nothing happened.

"Let me try," Esk said. He took the rock and drew a doorknob. Then he made as if to grasp and turn that knob.

It turned. The door opened out of the wall.

Startled, they piled through. They entered a large gallery in which many lovely pictures were hung.

"Exhibitions at a picture," Chex remarked, looking around.

The path led past scenes of rivers and lakes and waterfalls, past scenes of deserts and badlands and dry holes, past scenes of snowy forests and flowering bushes, past scenes of strange houses, including one with chicken legs, until it stopped at a portrait of a gargoyle. A stream of water was issuing from the monster's mouth and splashing into a pond below.

Their path went up the wall and into the pond in the picture.

Esk sighed. "I'll try it," he said.

He poked his finger at the pond. His finger passed into the picture, and he felt the wetness of the water. He pushed his arm through, and it got wet too. Finally, he put both arms into it, ducked his head, and dived forward into the picture.

He splashed in the pond, which was deeper than it looked. He swam, and in a moment hauled himself out onto the pavement beyond the pond, dripping. He looked back, but saw nothing except the rest of this landscape, which was a pleasant country village whose source of water was evidently this fountain. The sun was high in the sky, buttressed by fleecy clouds. He had entered the world of the picture.

The path traveled on down a road, which led into an ordinary forest. There was nothing to indicate that this was the world of the gourd.

There was a splash behind him. Volney Vole appeared in the water. In a moment he caught the rim of the pond and hauled himself out, as Esk had done.

Then Marrow arrived, appearing from nowhere. The skeleton could

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not swim; he simply put his bone feet down and walked along the bottom until he came to the edge. Then Esk reached down and caught a bone hand, and helped haul Marrow up and out.

"There will be a splash," Marrow warned.

Indeed there was, as Chex landed in the pond. This time Esk was watching closely. She appeared as if jumping out of a mirror: first her front section, then her hindquarters. The mass of her body caused the water to rise and overflow. She had a difficult time climbing out of the pond; she got her forepart clear, but Esk had to catch her hands to help her brace and lift a hind foot, and Marrow grabbed that hind foot and lifted it to the rim. Then they helped roll her up and over that brink as she hauled her other hind foot up. She got on her belly, precariously poised by the pond, and finally managed to tilt her body away from it so she could get back to her feet.

"If this is the easiest and safest path," she grunted, "I would very much dislike the most difficult and hazardous one!" She shook herself, spraying water out. "I hope we don't have far to go yet!"

They walked down the road to the forest. As they passed the first trees, the path abruptly diverged from the road and plunged into the thickest tangle of vegetation.

Chex sighed. "I should have known."

But something was nagging Esk. "This path seems familiar, somehow."

"Naturally," Marrow said. "It is the Lost Path."

"And the lost containment spell will be on this path!" Esk exclaimed. "We're getting close!"

Buoyed by this realization, they piled onto the devious path. Only Marrow seemed apprehensive. "There will be no escape by having your eye contact with the window to the gourd broken, this time," he warned,

That chilled Esk's enthusiasm. But he saw no alternative but to forge ahead. If they became trapped on the Lost Path despite the guidance of the pathfinder spell, then their dream of saving the Vale of the Vole was vain. But if they did not take this path, the dream would be abandoned.

Chapter 14. Elements

1 he path was inordinately convoluted, but as they traveled it, it seemed clear enough, just as had been the case when Esk was on it before. Soon the familiarity was unmistakable; he remembered the contours. Before long they would come to the place where—

"Say, Marrow!" he exclaimed. "Will you be where you were?"

"I am here, of course," the skeleton said.

"I mean that if you entered my world the same way I entered yours, just in mind rather than in substance, your body should—"

"I doubt it. We magical creatures lack your grip on reality; we are entirely where we appear to be. So neither I nor Bria Brassie will be on this path; you found us, so we are no longer lost."

Chex nodded silently; she had evidently figured this out for herself.

"That makes sense," Esk said. But he remained nervous; suppose the skeleton did appear in the path?

But when they came to that spot, only the dent left by Marrow's hipbone remained in the ground. Marrow's explanation had been correct. His whole existence was where it seemed to be. There were indeed differences between the living and the magical creatures.

Before, he had had to hold Marrow's bone hand to get him unlost; now Marrow was walking independently, because he had been found. Evidently the pathfinder's path superseded the qualities of the Lost Path, and none of them was lost.

Something red bounded away. Chex was startled, but Esk reassured her. "That's only a roe. Roes are red."

She gave him a peculiar look, but did not comment.

Then they reached the potted plant. "That's a violent," Esk said nonchalantly. "Violents are blue."

She looked at him again, and again stifled her comment.

"It was supposed to be planted on a median strip, but they rejected it," Esk continued.

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She finally bit. "Why?"

"Because they didn't want any more violents on the media," he explained innocently.

"That does it!" she exclaimed. "I am going to throw you into the thorn bushes!"

"Please don't; that would nettle me."

She took a step toward him, but was interrupted by Volney's squeal of laughter. Embarrassed, she faced away instead.

"1 suspect she is the one who got nettled," Marrow remarked. They went on in silence. Soon they passed the eye queue vine, and the lost vitamin F, and the other items, until they passed the place where Bria had been. Esk remembered her kisses of apology, and felt himself flushing.

"Here is where the brassie picked up that accommodation spell," Marrow remarked.

"The what?" Esk asked, startled.

"The lost accommodation spell. Elves and other creatures use them when they want to breed with folk the wrong size or type."

"How can it be lost, if the elves use it?" Chex asked.

"It's not listed in the Lexicon, just as the eye queue is not, so it is lost," Marrow explained patiently.

"Just how does an accommodation spell accommodate?" Esk asked, now quite interested. He remembered how friendly Bria had become about that time, and wished he had realized the spell's nature before.

"If an elf wishes to breed with a human being, or an ogre or whatever, the accommodation spell, when invoked, makes them appear to be of similar size. Thus they can accomplish their desire with reasonable dispatch."

"Suppose they are different in type, rather than in size?" Esk asked. "If, for example, one were flesh and the other metal?"

"The spell would make them compatible," Marrow said. "Those elven spells are quite potent. They could breed."

"I suspect that someone has designs on someone," Chex remarked. She glanced at Esk's flush. "And that someone doesn't mind very much."

"Is it, uh, one of those one-time spells?" Esk asked. "Like the pathfinder, where one person can only—?"

"No, it's continually invokable," Marrow said. "I was haunting an elf once, in a dream, and he was living with a mermaid on a regular basis. He was afraid of death, not of loss of the mermaid, and he had been with her for years." He made a fleshless grin. "I assumed the semblance of an elven skeleton and chased him right to the edge of the water, but then the

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mermaid put her arms around him and shielded him from the fear I represented, and I had to retire. She had a bosom like that of Chex, except that it was glistening wet."

"My pectorals get glistening wet when I exercise in hot weather," Chex remarked.

"But what—what about an unreal person?" Esk asked with tormented excitement. "How could she—?"

"We have already seen some progress, with Marrow himself," Chex murmured. "Sometimes the unreal becomes real, in association with real folk."

They continued walking the path, but Esk was hardly aware of the other details along the way. Had Bria's apologies really been because of the nature of her culture, or to impress him? She had impressed him, all right! But what had been her motive? Was her true interest in him, or in getting unlost, or in trying to become real?

The more he considered it, the more it seemed to him that she had wanted some avenue out of her predicament, and he was what had been available. So she had left the gourd with him, and now had independence of a sort. She could use that accommodation spell with any other male; why should she bother with him? He wished that thought did not bother him so much.

"Well, look at that!" Chex exclaimed, startling him out of his reverie. "Our path diverges from the Lost Path!"

"But the containment vpell—ivn't it lovt?" Volney asked.

"Perhaps not in quite the way we assumed," Chex said. "Or perhaps there is a section of this lost path that is neither easy nor safe, so we must detour past it."

They followed the pathfinder's path. It led into a region completely different from their recent experience. Splashes of color formed in the air above it, spreading and changing and dissolving. Strange sounds sounded, groans and whines and unpleasant laughter. Smells wafted by, some like perfume, some like rotting brains.

"It is good to return to conventional horrors," Marrow said enthusiastically.

"That's right," Chex said. "This is the origin of bad dreams; I had almost forgotten."

"Yes. These are the sensations experienced by those alone and nervous. Aren't they lovely?"

"Lovely," she agreed with resignation.

Then a huge face formed above them, its eyes glowing. "Whoo invades theese mmy premisesss?" it demanded windily.

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"Oh, go retire to the Lost Path!" Chex snapped at it. **We've been through enough already.*'

"Oooh, sooo?" the face asked, scowling. The mouth opened wide, impossibly wide, until it was larger than the face itself. From it came another entire face, uglier than the first, with a hugh warty nose and dag-gerlike teeth.

"Tressspasssers!" this new face hissed.

"Look, would you mind?" Chex asked impatiently. "We are trying to get somewhere, and we're getting tired of routine spooks. Just let us alone."

"Aarrgh!" the face growled. It opened its mouth, and the dagger teeth flashed. From this orifice came a third face, even worse, with little dancing flames in lieu of eyes, and a beak instead of a nose, and a hole like a deep cave for a mouth.

"Will you leave oft?" Chex shouted. She unslung her bow, nocked an arrow, and let it fly at the beak.

"Uh, that might not be wise," Esk said, somewhat too late. He was amazed at the facility with which she had attacked the face. He had known that centaurs were good with bows, but had not realized just how good.

The arrow passed right through the beak, for it was only an image in the sky. But the face reacted with outrage. It roared, sending down a blast of frigid air admixed with sleet, and lunged down at them. Before they could move, the gaping orifice closed on them. The monster had swallowed their party whole!

The temperature plummeted, and the sleet quickly coated them with ice. In a moment they found themselves standing on a snow-covered hill, with the wind howling around them, driving off any heat remaining in their flimsy bodies.

"You're right," Chex said, her teeth chattering. "I shouldn't have done that."

They huddled together for scant warmth, except for Marrow, who wasn't affected, though the snow was caking on his bones. The storm raged around them, blotting out the sun and, indeed, the sky. They were unable to look into the wind; the whole scene was just the rush of air. It was mean in the belly of the air monster!

And it was increasing! The force of the wind was threatening to sweep them right off the mountain, even before they froze to death. "S-some easy p-path!" Esk chattered.

"I believe this is the realm of the Element of Air," Marrow com-

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mented. "The gourd annex, of course. Air becomes quite stormy when aroused."

"Fanvy that!" Volney muttered from almost under the snow.

"Fancy that," Chex repeated. "Let's burrow down for some warmth until this passes."

"It will not pass," Marrow said. "When Air is offended, it will not rest until it destroys its offender."

Indeed, the storm was still intensifying. The sleet and snow blasted at them like sharp sand. Their huddle was not effective; there was too much exposed surface, and the wind and cold were too intense.

"We shall have to tunnel down below it," Chex said. "Only I am unable to tunnel well, and am afraid of close confinement. Only the knowledge that this is all the world of the gourd has enabled me to endure the subterranean passages we have navigated hitherto,"

"I am able to tunnel," Volney said. He donned his special talons and more or less dived into the snow, sending up a shower of white. In a moment he disappeared into the hole he was excavating, with only the flying refuse signaling his activity.

"Your fear of confinement did not manifest in your bad dream," the skull remarked.

"That is true," she agreed, surprised. "I was more afraid of rejection than of getting squashed. If I conquered my deepest fear, I should be able to conquer my lesser fear." She squared her shoulders. "At any rate, I will try. I think at this point I would rather be squoze than froze."

"But it will take too long to dig a hole in the ground big enough for all of us," Esk said.

"We can make a snow fort to shelter us partially until the digging is complete," Chex said. She tried to move snow with her hands, but they quickly turned blue, and her activity slowed; she was freezing. "Oh, if only I had a shovel!" she exclaimed, tucking her hands under her wings.

"I will be your shovel," Marrow said. "Kick me."

"What?" Esk asked.

"Kick me apart and form my bones into a shovel," the skeleton clarified.

"Oh, yes!" Chex agreed. "Bend over."

Marrow bent over, and she turned around and delivered a powerful kick to his bone posterior. His bones flew apart, but as they landed they connected in a chain. Chex formed this chain into a crude shovel, with the long leg bones serving as the handle and the tines of the rib cage serving as the scoop. There were a number of bones left over, so Esk formed these into a somewhat clumsier second shovel with the grinning

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skull as the scoop. There was a linkage of tiny bones between the shovels; it seemed that Marrow never came completely apart.

They proceeded to dig, and it went very well. The energy they expended wanned them, and the shovels worked very well despite their seeming clumsiness. Apparently the magic of the skeleton facilitated whatever task his bones were shaped to. Soon they had a massive excavation, and the force of the howling winds was first cramped and then cut off.

Meanwhile Volney was still boring down. Abruptly his head appeared in the hole. "I have found a cave," he announced. "However, it may not be wive to enter it."

"Why not?" Esk asked. "We can't stay here long; we'll freeze!"

"There may be another monvter."

Chex paused in her labor. "It is a warm cave?"

"Comfortable. But—"

"Then let's chance the monster!" she exclaimed.

"But what about the path?" Esk asked. "We have to follow the path!"

"The path iv there," Volney said.

"That does it," Chex said. "If I can scramble down your hole, I'm going to!"

"In a moment," Volney said. He resumed tunneling, and the hole widened rapidly. Soon it was wide enough to allow Chex to squeeze through—or so she judged.

"Push me when I need it," she told Esk, handing him her shovel. "Ignore me if I scream; I may foolishly panic." She had to lean her head and shoulders way forward, and grasp her front legs with her hands, and stretch her hind feet out behind. It looked like an extremely uncomfortable position for her, but she simply did what she had to to get by.

Volney helped pull her from below, and Esk helped push her from above, but the thickest part of her body wedged in tight and would not move. She was stuck.

"Now what do we do?" Esk asked rhetorically.

"Use one of my bones as a lever to pry her out," the skull said.

Startled, Esk almost dropped it. But why shouldn't Marrow talk when re-formed into a shovel? He spoke by magic anyway. He set his shovel, which had arm bones for its handle, at the end of Chex's shovel, forming a double-length pole. "Can you hold firm if I push at the side?"

"Certainly," the skull said. "We skeletons pride ourselves on our rigidity."

Esk slid the business end of the shovel/pole down where the centaur

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was wedged, then slowly leaned outward on the handle, trying to wedge her body in just that amount needed to enable it to pass. It didn't work.

"A little to the left," the skull suggested.

Esk tried again, to the left, beside one of her folded wings. "Yes, that's it," the skull said. "I can feel the give, here. A little more . . ."

Esk pushed a little harder. Suddenly Chex gave a wiggle, and her torso slid down a little. It was working!

Following Marrow's suggestions, Esk pried carefully in different places, each time getting the torso down a bit more. Finally it slid the rest of the way down. She was through!

Esk dropped down behind her. The hole debouched in a cave, where the centaur and the vole were now standing. In the light from the hole he had come from, Esk saw that Chex was touching up some scrapes on her hide. "I, ah, had to pry a little," he said.

"Good thing, too," she said. "I was in danger of suffocati