"Sometimes," the goblin girl said. "Maybe one out of ten. One of our old goblins is supposed to have done it a long time ago in his youth. We're not sure we believe him. He mumbles about trials of fear and
pain and pride and such-like, making no sense at all. But it is theoretically possible to win."
"So that's why Smash has gotten so weak," the Siren said. "He was using his strength as if he had plenty to spare, but he has an illness of the soul."
"I know about that," Fireoak breathed.
"I didn't know!" Tandy said, clouding up. "Oh, it's all my fault! I never would have taken my soul back if-"
"I didn't know, either," the Siren said, calming her. "But I should have suspected. Maybe I did suspect; I just didn't pursue the thought fast enough. I forgot that Smash is no longer a simple-minded ogre; he has the devious Eye Queue contamination, making him react more like human folk."
"The curse of human intellect, replacing the primeval beastly innocence," Tandy agreed. "I, too, should have realized-"
"Tandy, we've got to help Smash destroy that lien!"
"Yes!" Tandy agreed emphatically. "We can't leave him to the law of the lien."
Smash almost smiled, despite the seriousness of the situation. During his travels with Prince Dor, he had encountered the law of the loin; was this related?
"I'll help," Goldy said.
The Siren frowned. "What is your interest? Your tribe was going to eat us all."
"How can I get to another goblin tribe if I don't have a strong ogre to clear the way? I do know a little bit about the matter."
"I suppose you do have a practical interest," the Siren agreed. "We all need the ogre, until we find our own individual situations. What do you know about the gourds that might help?"
"Our people have reported details of the gourd geography. It's the same for every gourd; they're all identical inside. But each person enters at a different place, and it's possible to get lost. So it is best to carry a line of string to mark the way."
"But a person is out the moment his contact with the peephole is broken! How can he get lost?"
"It's not that sort of lost," Goldy said. "There's a lot of territory in there, and some pretty strange effects.
Some talk of graves, others of mirrors. A person always returns to the spot he left, and the time he left, no matter how long he's been away from it; a break in the sequence is only an interruption, not a change.
If he's lost in gourdland, he's still lost when he returns there, even if he's been a long time out of his gourd. He doesn't know where he's going because he doesn't know where he's been. But if he strings the string, it'll mark where he's been, and he'll know the moment he crosses his trail. And that's the secret."
Smash was getting quite interested. He had been out of his gourd for some time, but apparently could still return. "What secret?"
"The Night Stallion is always in the last place a person looks, in the gourd," the goblin girl explained.
"So all you have to do to reach him is always look in a new place-never in a place you've been before; that's a waste of time and effort. You are apt to get caught in an endless loop, and then you are really lost. You may never find him if you rehash your old route."
"You do know something about it!" Tandy agreed. "But suppose Smash threads the maze, finds the Night Stallion-and is too weak to fight him?"
"Oh, it's not that sort of strength he needs," the goblin girl said. "We've had physically strong goblins go in, and physically weak ones, and the weak ones do just as well. All kinds lose in the gourd. Physical strength may even be a liability. Destroying the facilities does not destroy the commitment. Only defeating the Stallion does that, on the Stallion's own terms."
"What are the Stallion's terms?"
Goldy shrugged. "No one knows. Our one surviving goblin refuses to tell, assuming he knows. He just sort of turns a little grayer. I think there is no way to find out except to face the creature."
"I think we have enough to go on," Tandy said. "Let's take a gourd along. We have to get to the fireoak tree before the lunatic-fringe-spell gives out." She went to harvest a gourd, her concern for Smash overriding her fear of the thing.
"I think the peephole is a lunatic fringe," the Siren muttered.
They moved on. Smash pondered what the goblin girl had said. If physical strength was not important in the struggle with the Night Stallion, why was it important to join this contest early, before weakness progressed too far? Was that a contradiction or merely a confusion? He concluded that it was the latter.
There was weakness of the body and of the spirit; both might fade together, but they were not identical.
Smash was physically weak now because he had overextended himself; otherwise it should have taken him three months to fade. His soul had probably suffered relatively little so far. But if he waited till the end of the lien term to meet the Stallion, then his soul would be weak, and he would lose the nonphysical contest. Yes, that seemed to make sense. Things didn't have to make sense, with magic, but it helped.
They arrived at a pleasant glade. Within it was a crazy sort of shimmer that made Smash feel a little crazy himself; he turned his eyes away.
"My tree!" the hamadryad cried, suddenly reviving. Smash set her down.
"Where?"
"There! Behind the lunatic fringe!" She seemed to grow stronger instant by instant and in a moment pranced into the glade. Her body wavered and vanished.
"I guess the spell is still holding," Tandy said. She followed Fireoak, carrying the gourd, and disappeared similarly. The others went the same route.
When Smash contacted the fringe, he felt a momentary surge of dizziness; then he was through. There before him was the tree, a medium-large fireoak, its leaves blazing in the late afternoon sunlight. The hamadryad was hugging its trunk in ecstasy, her body almost indistinguishable from it, and her color was returning. She had rejoined her soul. The tree, too, seemed to be glowing, and leaves that had been wilting were now forging back into health. Evidently it had missed her also. There was something very touching about the love of nymph and tree for each other.
Tandy approached him, her blue eyes soulful. "Smash, if I had known-" She choked up. She shoved the gourd at him.
"We'll let you go into it until the lunatic fringe fades and the people attack this tree," the Siren said.
"Maybe you'll have time to conquer the Night Stallion and regain your full strength." She produced a ball of string that the hamadryad must have had stored in her tree. "Use this so you won't get lost in there,"
"But first eat something," Chem said, bringing an armful of fruits. "And get a night's sleep."
"No. I want to settle this now," Smash said.
"Oh, please do at least eat something 1" Tandy pleaded. "You can eat a lot in a hurry."
True words-and he was hungry. Ogres were usually hungry. So he crammed a bushel of whole fruits into his mouth and gulped them down, ogre-fashion, and drank a long pull of water from the spring at the base of the tree.
As the sun dropped down behind the forest, singeing the distant tips of trees. Smash took leave of the six females as if setting out on a long and hazardous trek. Then he settled down against the trunk of the tree, put the gourd in his lap, and applied his right eye to the peephole.
Instantly he was back in the gourd world. He stood before the crypt, having just gotten up from his snooze. Tandy was not there; for a moment he had feared that she would be locked into this adventure with him, since she had been here before, but of course she was free now.
A chill wind cut around the stonework, ruffling his fur. The landscape was bleak: all gravestones and dying weeds and dismal dark sky. "Beautiful!" he exclaimed. "I would like to stay here forever."