"She's sitting there by the ironwood tree. Her eyes are closed. I don't think she quite comprehends what has happened. Her wings-"
Tandy was fashioning the rope into a smaller harness. "Lower this to her. We'll draw her up!"
Smash merely stood where he was, listening. His brief surge of strength had been exhausted; now he could do nothing. He felt ashamed for his weakness and the horrible consequence of it, but had no further resource. John had thought she would be safe in the company of an ogre!
Chem drew the fairy up. Smash saw John huddled in the harness. Her once-lovely wings, with the blossoming flower patterns, were now melted amorphous husks, useless for flying. Would they ever grow back? It seemed unlikely.
"Well, we crossed the chasm," Tandy said. She was not happy. None of them was. One of their number had lost her invaluable wings, another was too wasted to stand, and Smash was too tired to move. If this
was typical of the hazards they faced, traversing central Xanth, how would they ever make it the rest of the way?
"Well, now," a new voice declared. Smash turned his head dully to view the speaker. It was a gnarled, ugly goblin-at the head of a fair-sized troop of goblins.
Goblins hated people of any type. The strait had become yet more dire.
Chapter 7. Lunatic Fringe
If you fight, we'll shove you all over the brink without your rope," the goblin leader said. He was a stunted black creature about John's height, with a huge head, hands, and feet. His short limbs seemed twisted, as if the bones had been broken and reset many times, and his face was similarly uneven, with one eye squinting, the other round, the nose bulbous, and the mouth crooked. By goblin standards, he was handsome.
The goblins spread out to surround the party. They peered at the ogre, centaur, hamadryad, fairy. Siren, and girl as if all were supreme curiosities. "You crossed the Gap?" the leader asked.
Tandy took it upon herself to answer. "What right have you to question us? I know your kind from the caves. You don't have any useful business with civilized folk."
The leader considered her. "Whom do you know in the caves, girl-thing?"
"Everybody who is anybody," she retorted. "The demons, the Diggle-worm, the Brain Coral-"
The leader seemed fazed. "Who are you?"
"I am Tandy, daughter of Crombie the Soldier and Jewel the Nymph. You know who sets out those black opals you goblins steal to give to your goblin girls! My mother, that's who. Without her there wouldn't be any gems of any kind to find anywhere."
There was a muttering commotion. "You have adequate connections," the goblin leader grudged. "Very well, we won't eat you. You may go, girl-thing."
"What of my friends?" Tandy asked suspiciously.
"They have no such connections. Their mothers don't plant gems in the rocks. We'll cook them tonight."
"Oh, no, you won't! My friends go with me!"
"If that's the way you want it," the goblin said indifferently.
"That's the way I want it."
"Come this way, then. You'll all go in the pot together."
"That's not what I meant!" Tandy cried.
"It isn't?" The goblin seemed surprised. "You said you wanted to be with your friends."
"But not in the pot!"
The goblin shook his head in confusion. "Females change their minds a lot. Exactly what do you want?"
"I want us all to continue our trip north through Xanth," Tandy said, enunciating clearly. "I can't do it alone. I don't know anything about surface Xanth. I need the ogre to protect me. If he weren't worn out from fighting the Gap Dragon and hauling us all up out of the Gap, he'd be cramming all of you into the pot!"
"Nonsense. Ogres don't use pots."
Tandy huffed herself up into the resemblance of a tantrum. But before she completed the process, a goblin lieutenant sidled up to whisper in the leader's ear. The leader nodded. "Maybe so," he agreed. He turned back to Tandy. "You are five females, guarded by the tired ogre?"
"Yes," Tandy agreed guardedly.
"How many others has he eaten?"
"None!" Tandy responded indignantly. "He doesn't eat friends!"
"He can't be much of an ogre, then."
"He beat up the Gap Dragon!"
The goblin considered. "There is that." He came to a decision. "My name is Gorbage Goblin. I control this section of the Rim. But I have a daughter, and we are exogamous."
"What?" Tandy asked, bewildered.
"Exogamous, twit. Girls must marry outside their home tribes. But there is no contiguous goblin tribe; we are apart from the main nation of goblins. The dragons extended their territory recently, cutting us off." He scowled. "The other goblins keep forgetting us, the slugbrains. I don't know why."
Smash knew why. It was the forget-spell laid on the Gap Chasm. These goblins lived too close to it, so suffered a peripheral effect.
"So my daughter Goldy Goblin must cross to another tribe," Gorbage grumbled. "But travel beyond our territory is now hazardous to the health. She needs a guard."
Tandy's face lighted with eventual comprehension. "You want us to take your daughter with us?"
"To the next goblin tribe, north of here. Beyond the dragons, in the midst of the five forbidden regions, near the firewall. Yes."
Five forbidden regions? Firewall? Smash wondered about that. It didn't sound like the sort of territory to help at all if they happened on another dragon. Maybe he just needed a good meal and a night's sleep.
Yet it had never before taken him so long to recover from exertion. He suspected something was wrong,
but he didn't "know what.
They came to the region of hypnogourds. The vines sprawled abundantly, and gourds were all about.
Smash stared at them, half mesmerized. He had thought his soul lost when the Siren smashed the other gourd-but was it possible that the gourd had been a mere window on the otherworld reality? His Eye Queue was crazy enough to think this was so. Could he use another gourd to return to that world and fight for his soul?
He felt small hands on his arm. "What is it. Smash?" Tandy asked. "I'm deathly afraid of those things, but you seem fascinated. What's with you and those awful gourds?"
He answered, not fully conscious of his situation. "I must go fight the Night Stallion."
"A Dark Horse?"
"The ruler of the nightmares. He has a lien on my soul."
"Oh, no! Is that how you rescued my soul?"
Smash snapped out of it. He hadn't meant to say anything about the lien to Tandy. "I'm gibbering. Ignore it."
"So that's why you wanted another gourd," the Siren said. "You had unfinished business there! I didn't realize..."
Now the goblin girl approached. "The ogre's been into a gourd? I've seen that happen before. Some people escape unscathed; some lose their souls; some get only halfway free. We lost a lot of goblins before we caught on. Now we use those gourds as punishment. Thieves are set at a peephole for an hour; they usually escape with a bad scare and never thieve again. Murderers are set there for a day; they often lose their souls. It varies; some people are cleverer than others, and some luckier. The lien is like a delayed sentence; a month or two and it's all over."
"A lien!" the Siren said. "How long for you. Smash?"
"Three months," he replied glumly.
"And you said nothing!" she cried indignantly. "What kind of a creature are you?" But she answered herself immediately. "A self-sacrificing one. Smash, you should have told us."
"Yes," Tandy agreed faintly. "I never realized-"
"How can a person nullify such a lien?" the Siren asked, getting practical.
"He has to go back in and fight," Goldy said. "If he doesn't, he just gets weaker, bit by bit, as the Stallion calls in the soul. It's too late to fight, once the lien is due. He has to do it early, while he has most of his strength."
"But a person can redeem himself if he goes in early?" the Siren asked.