Smash had lived and thought like an ogre a lot longer than he had lived and thought intelligently. Now he reverted to convenient old habits. He roared, picked up the coffin, and hurled it against the wall. The box fell to the floor, somewhat sprung, and several ceiling stones 'dropped on it. Nauseating goo dribbled from a crack in it. Dirt sifted down from the chamber wall to smooth the outlines.
"Maybe further negotiation is possible after all," the voice from the coffin said, somewhat shaken.
"Would you consider trading souls?"
Smash readied his hamfist again. "Wait!" the voice cried, alarmed. It evidently wasn't used to dealing with real brutes. "I merely collect souls; I don't have the authority to give them back. If you want the girl's soul now, your only option is to trade."
The ogre considered. He might smash the coffin and its occupant to pieces, but that would not necessarily recover the soul. If Tandy's soul were in there, it could get hurt in the battering. So maybe it was better to bargain. "Trade what?"
"Another soul, of course. How about yours?"
This box thought he was a typically stupid ogre. "No."
"Well, someone else's. What about that buxom mature nymph out in Xanth, with the sometime fish-tail?
She probably has a luscious, bouncy, juicy soul."
Smash considered again. He decided, with an un-ogrish precision of ethics, that he could not make any commitments on behalf of the Siren. "Not her soul. And not mine."
"Then the girl's soul must remain."
Smash got another whiff of the stench from the coffin and knew that Tandy's soul could not be allowed to rot there. He still did not consider the deal by which the coffin had gotten Tandy's soul to be valid. He stooped to pick up the battered coffin again.
"Wait!" the voice cried. "There is one other option. You could accede to a lien."
The ogre paused. "Explain."
"A lien is a claim on the property of another as security for a debt," the coffin explained. "A lien on your soul would mean that you agree to replace the girl's soul with another soul-and if you don't, then your own soul is forfeit. But you keep your soul in the interim, or most of it."
It did seem to make sense. "How long an interim?"
"Shall we say thirty days?"
"Six months," Smash said. "You think I'm stupid?"
"I did think that," the coffin confessed. "After all, you are an ogre, and it is well known that the brains of ogres are mostly in their muscles. In fact, their brains are mostly muscles."
"Not true," Smash said. "An ogre's skull is filled with bone, not muscle."
"I stand corrected. My skull is filled with necrosis. How about sixty days?"
"Four months."
"Split the difference: ninety days."
"Okay," Smash agreed. "But I don't agree you are entitled to keep any soul, just because you tricked an innocent girl into trading it off for nothing."
"Are you sure you're an ogre? You don't sound like one."
"I'm an ogre," Smash affirmed. "Would you like me to throw you around some more to prove it?"
"That won't be necessary," the coffin said quickly. "If you disagree with the assessment, you must deal with the boss: the Night Stallion. He makes decisions of policy."
"The Dark Horse?"
"Close enough; some do call him that. He governs the herd of nightmares."
It began to fall into place. "This is where the nightmares live? By day, when they're not out delivering bad dreams to sleepers?"
"Exactly. All the bad dreams are generated here in the gourd, from the raw material of people's fundamental fears-loss, pain, death, shame, and the unknown. The Stallion decides where the dreams go, and the mares take them there. Your girlfriend abused a mare, so it took a lien on her soul, and when she came here, that lien was called due. So her soul is forfeit, and now we have it, and only the Night Stallion can change that. Why don't we set you up for an appointment with the Stallion, and you can settle this directly with him?"
"An appointment? When?"
"Well, he has a full calendar. Bad dreams aren't light fancies, you know. There's a lot of evil in the world that needs recognition. It's a lot of work to craft each dream correctly and designate it for exactly the right person at the right time. So the Stallion is quite busy. The first opening is six months hence."
"But my lien expires in three months!"
"You're smarter than the average ogre, for sure! You might force an earlier audience, but you'd have to find the Stallion first. He certainly won't come to you within three months. I really wouldn't recommend the effort of locating him."
Smash considered again. It seemed to him that this coffin protested too profusely. Something was being concealed here. Time for the ogre act again. "Perhaps so," he said. "There is therefore no point in restraining my natural inclination for violence." He picked up a rock and crumpled it to chips and sand
with one hand. He eyed the coffin.
"But I'm sure you can find him!" the box said quickly. "All you have to do is seek the path of most resistance. That's all I can tell you, honest!"
Smash decided that he had gotten as much as he could from the coffin. "Good enough. Give me the girl's soul, and I'll leave my three-month lien and meet the Stallion when I find him."
"Do you think a soul is something you can just carry in your hand?" the coffin demanded derisively.
"Yes," Smash said. He contemplated his hand, slowly closing it into a brutishly ugly fist that hovered menacingly over the coffin.
"Quite," the coffin agreed nervously, sweating another blob of stinking goo. The soul floated up, a luminescent globe that passed right through the wood. Smash cupped it carefully in his hand and tromped from the gloomy chamber. Neither coffin nor skeletons opposed him.
Tandy sat where she had been, the picture of hopeless girlish misery. "Here is your soul," Smash said, and held out the glowing globe.
Unbelievingly, she reached for it. The globe expanded at her touch, becoming a ghost-shape that quickly overlapped her body and merged. For an instant her entire body glowed, right through the tattered red dress; then she was her normal self. "Oh, Smash, you did it!" she exclaimed. "I love you! You recovered my soul from that awful corpse!"
"I promised to protect you," he said gruffly.
"How can I reward you?" She was actually pinching herself, amazed by her restoration. Smash, too, was amazed; he had not before appreciated how much difference a person's soul made.
"No reward," he insisted. "It's part of my job, my service for my Answer."
She considered. "Yes, I suppose. But how ever did you do it? I thought there was no way-"
"I had to indulge my natural propensities slightly," he admitted, glancing at the pile of bones he had made. The bones shuddered and settled lower, eager to avoid his attention.
"Oh. I guess you were more terrible than the skeletons were," she said.
"Naturally. That. is the nature of ogres. We're worse than anything." Smash thought it best not to inform her of the actual nature of his deal. "Let's get out of here."
"Oh, yes! But how?"
That was another problem. He could bash through walls, but the force holding Tandy and himself inside the gourd was intangible. "I think we'll have to wait for the Siren to free us. All she has to do is move the gourd so we can't look into it any more, but she doesn't know when we'll be finished in here."
"Oh, I don't want to stay another minute in this horrible place! If I had known what would happen when I peeked into that funny little hole-"
"It's not a bad place, this," Smash said, trying to cheer her. "It can even be fun."
"Fun? In this awful graveyard?"
"Like this." Smash had spied a skeleton poking around a grave, perhaps looking for a new convert. He sneaked up behind it. Ogres didn't have to shake the earth when they walked; they did it because they enjoyed it. "B0001" he bellowed.