Now the volcano rumbled again. It might be in its off phase, but it wasn't entirely helpless. A new fissure opened in its side, and bright red lava welled out, like fresh blood. It spilled down toward them, shifting channels to orient accurately.
"It's coming for us!" Tandy cried, alarmed. "This land doesn't like us!"
Smash looked northeast. The goblin territory was far across the treacherously shifting rocks. Already the lava plain was humping like a slow ocean swell, as if trying to break free of its cool crust. Smash knew that if much more fragmentation occurred, they would all fall through that crust into the liquid lava below.
"Too far!"
Tandy cried despairingly. "We can't make it!"
"North!"
Chem said. "It's better to the north!" They scrambled north, though that horizon looked like a wall of fire. The lava crust broke into big plates that, in turn, fragmented into platelets that slowly subsided under the weight of the party. Red lava squeezed up around the edges and leaked out onto the surface. Meanwhile, the fresh lava from the fissure flowed down to join the turbulent plain, further melting the platelets. There was now no retreat.
"Spread out!" Goldy cried. "Not too much weight on any one plate!"
They did it. The goblin girl was the most agile, so she led the way, finding the best plates and the best crossing places. Tandy followed, glancing nervously back at Smash as if afraid he would be too clumsy. She did care for him; it was obvious, now that Biythe had given him the hint. But that was hardly worth worrying about at this moment. They might all soon perish.
Next in line was Chem, carrying John on her back, her hooves handling the maneuvering well. Then came
Smash
, holding the Siren in his arms. Her feet had converted back to the tail; evidently that alleviated the pain in her ankle. However, her tail form was also her bare-top form, and the sight of all that juggling flesh made him ravenous again. He hoped he never got so hungry that he forgot these were his friends.
The edges of the plates depressed alarmingly as they took Smash's weight, for it was concentrated in a smaller area than was the centaur's. Once a plate broke under his weight, becoming two saucers, and he had to scramble, dipping a toe in red lava; it hurt terribly, but he ran on.
"Your toe!" the Siren exclaimed. "It's scorched!"
"Better that than falling in," he grunted.
"In case we don't make it," she said, "I'd better tell you now. You're a lot of creature. Smash."
"Ogres are big," he agreed. "You're a fair morsel of creature yourself." Indeed, she had continued to grow more youthful, and was now a sight to madden men. Or so he judged, from his alien viewpoint.
"You're more than I think you know. You could have been where you're going by now if you hadn't let the rest of
us
impose."
"No. I agreed to take Tandy along, and the rest of you have helped. I'm not sure I could have handled the dragons alone, or gotten out of the gourd."
"You never would have gotten into the gourd alone," she pointed out. "Then you could have avoided the dragons. Would another ogre have taken Tandy along?"
He laughed. He did that a lot since the advent of the Eye Queue, for things he wouldn't have noticed before now evinced humorous aspects. "Another ogre would have eaten the bunch of you!"
"I rest my case."
"Rest your tail, too, while you're at it. If I fall into the lava, you'll have to walk alone."
It was her turn to laugh, somewhat faintly. "Or swim," she said, looking down at the lava cracks.
Now they were at the border. The wall of fire balked them. Goldy stood on the plate nearest it, daunted. "I don't know how much fire there is," she said. "Goblin legend suggests the wall is thin, but--"
"We can't stay here," Tandy said. "I'll find out." And she took a breath and plunged into the fire.
The others stood on separate plates, appalled. Then Tandy's voice came back: "It's all right! Come on through!"
Smash closed his eyes and plunged toward her voice. The flame singed his fur and the flowing hair of the mermaid; then he was on firm ground, coughing.
He stood on a burned-out field. Wisps of smoke rose from lingering blazes, but mostly the ashes were cool. Farther to the north a forest fire raged, however, and periodically the wind shifted, bringing choking smoke and sprinkling new ashes. To the west there seemed to be a lake of fire, sending up occasional mushroom-shaped masses of smoke. To the east there was something like a flashing field of fire, with intermittent columns of flame.
Chem and John landed beside Smash. The fairy was busy slapping out smolders in the centaur's mane. "This is an improvement, but not much of one," Chem said. "Let's get off this burn!"
"I second the motion," Tandy agreed. She, too, had suffered during the crossing; parts of her brown hair had been scorched black.
Goldy appeared, in similar condition.
None of the girls was as pretty as she bad been.
They moved east, paralleling the thin wall of fire. This was the Region of Fire, but since fire had to have something to burn, they were safe for the moment.
Then a column of white fire erupted just ahead of them. The heat of it drove them back--only to be heated again by another column to the side.
"Gas," the Siren said. "It puffs up from fumaroles, then ignites and burns out. Can we tell where the next ones will be?"
They watched for a few moments. "Only where they've been," Chem said. "The pattern of eruption and ignition seems completely random."
"That means well get scorched," the Siren said.
"Unless we go around."
But there was no way around, for the forest fire was north and the lava flows were beyond the firewall to the south.
Also, new foliage was sprouting through the ashes on which they stood, emerging cracklingly dry; it would catch fire and burn off again very soon. It seemed the ashes were very rich fertilizer, but there was very little water for the plants, so they grew dehydrated. Here in the Region of Fire, there was no long escape from fire.
"How can we get through?" Tandy asked despairingly. Smash put his Eye Queue curse to work yet again. He was amazed at how much he seemed to need it, now that he had it, when he had never needed it before, as if intelligence were addictive; it kept generating new uses for itself. He was also amazed at what his stupid bonemuscle ogre brain could do when boosted by the Queue and cudgeled by necessity. "Go only where they've been," he said."
The others didn't understand, so be showed the way. "Follow me!" He watched for a dying column,
then
stepped near it as it flickered out. There would be a little while before it built up enough new gas to fire again. He waited in the diminishing shimmer of heat, watching the other columns. When another died, next to his own, he stepped into its vacated spot.
The other members of the party followed him. "I'll assume this is wit instead of luck," the Siren murmured. Smash was still carrying her, though now she had switched back to legs and dress, in case he had to set her down.
As they moved to the third fumarole, the first fired again. These flares did not dawdle long! Now they were in the middle of the columns, unable to escape unscathed. But Smash stepped forward again into another dying flame, panting in the stink of it, yet surviving unburned.
In this manner the party made its precarious and uncomfortable way through the fires, and came at last to the east firewall. They plunged through--and found themselves in the pleasant, rocky region of the goblins.
"What a relief!" Tandy exclaimed. "Nothing could be worse than that, except maybe what's inside a gourd."
"You haven't met the local goblins yet," Goldy muttered.
There was a small stream paralleling the wall, cool and clean. They all drank deeply, catching up from their long engagement with the heat. Then they washed themselves off and tended to their injuries. The Siren bound her ankle with a bolt of gauze from a gauze-bush, and Tandy tended to Smash's scorched toe.
"Goldy will find her husband here," Smash said as she worked. "Soon we may find a human husband for you." He hoped he was doing the right thing, bringing the matter into the open.
She looked up at him sharply. "Who squealed?" she demanded.
"Biythe said you were looking for--"
"What does she know?" Tandy asked.
Smash shrugged awkwardly. This wasn't working out very well. "Not much, perhaps."
"When the time comes.
I'll make my own decision."
Smash could not argue with that. Maybe the brass girl had been mistaken. Biythe's heart, as she had noted, was brass, and perhaps she was not properly attuned to the hearts made of flesh. But
Smash
had a nagging feeling that wasn't it. These females seemed to have a common awareness of each other's nature that males lacked. Maybe it was just that they were all interested in only one thing. "Anyway, we'll deliver Goldy soon."
They found no food, so they walked on along the river, which curved eastward, north of the mountain range that separated this land from that of the dragons. The goblins had to be somewhere along here, perhaps occupying the mountains themselves. Goblins did tend to favor dark holes and deep recesses; few were seen in open Xanth, though Smash understood that in historical times the goblins had dominated the land. It seemed they had become less ugly and violent over the centuries, and this led inevitably to a diminution of their power. He had heard that some isolated goblin tribes had become so peaceful and handsome that they could hardly be distinguished from gnomes. That would be like ogres becoming like small giants--astonishing and faintly disgusting.
The river broadened and turned shallow, finally petering out into a big dull bog. Brightly colored fins poked up from the muck, and nostrils surmounting large teeth quested through it. Obviously the main portions of these creatures were hidden beneath the surface. It did not seem wise to set foot within that bog.
Especially not with a sore toe.
They skirted it, walking along the slope at the base of the mountain range. The day was getting late, and Smash was dangerously hungry. Where were the goblins?
Then the goblins appeared. An army of a hundred or so swarmed around the party. "What are you creeps doing here?" the goblin chief demanded with typical goblin courtesy.
Goldy stepped forward. "I am Goldy Goblin, daughter of the leader of the Gap Chasm Goblins, Gorbage," she announced regally.
"Never heard of them," the chief snapped. "Get out of our territory, pasteface."
"What?" Goldy was taken aback. She was very fair for a goblin, but it wasn't merely the name that put her at a loss.
"I said get out, or we'll cook you for supper."
"But I came here to get married!" she protested.
The goblin chief swung backhanded, catching the side of her head and knocking her down. "Not here you don't, foreign stranger slut." He turned away, and the goblin troops began to move off.
But Tandy acted. She was furious. "How dare you treat Goldy like that?" she demanded. "She came all the way here at great personal risk to get married to one of your worthless louts, and you--you--"
The goblin chief swung his hand at her as he had at Goldy, but Tandy moved faster. She made a hurling gesture in the air, with her face red and her eyes squinched almost shut. The goblin flipped feet over ears and landed, stunned, on the ground. She had thrown a tantrum at him.
Smash sighed. He knew the rules of interspecies dealings. How goblins treated one another was their own business; that was why these goblins had left Smash and the rest of his party alone. Their personal interplay was rough, but they were not looking for trouble with ogres or centaurs or human folk. Unlike the prior goblin tribe, this one honored the conventions. But now Tandy had interfered, and that made her fair game.
The goblin lieutenants closed on her immediately--and Tandy, like an expended fumarole, had no second tantrum to throw in self-defense. But Chem, John, and the Siren closed about her. "You dare to attack human folk?" the Siren demanded. She was limping on her bad ankle but was ferocious in her wrath.
"You folk aren't human," a goblin lieutenant said. "You're centaur, fairy, and mernymph--and this other looks to be part nymph, too, and she attacked our leader. Her life is forfeit, by the rules of the jungle."
Smash had not chosen this conflict, but now he had to intervene. "These three with me," he grunted, in his stress reverting to his natural ogre mode. He indicated Tandy with a hamfinger. "She, too, me do."
The lieutenant considered. Evidently the goblins were hierarchically organized, and with the chief out of order, the lieutenant had discretionary power. Goblins were tough to bluff or back off, once aroused, especially when they had the advantage of numbers. Still, this goblin hesitated. Three or four females were one thing; an ogre was another. A hundred determined goblins could probably overcome one ogre, but many of them would be smashed to pulp in the process, and many more would find their heads embedded in the trunks of trees, and a few would find themselves flying so high they might get stuck on the moon. Most of the rest would be less fortunate. So this goblin negotiated, while others hauled their unconscious leader away.
"This one must be punished." the lieutenant said. "If our chief dies, she must die. So it is written in the verbal covenant: an eyeball for an eyeball, a gizzard for a gizzard."
Smash knew how to negotiate with goblins. It was merely a matter of speaking their language. He formed a huge and gleaming metal fist. "She die, me vie."
The lieutenant understood him perfectly, but was in a difficult situation. It looked as if there would have to be a fight.
Then the goblin chief stirred, perhaps because he was uncomfortable being dragged by the ears over the rough ground. He was recovering consciousness.
"He isn't dead," the lieutenant said, relieved. That widened his selection of options. "But still she must be punished. We shall isolate her on an island."