They started to climb. None of them was familiar with this section of Xanth, which was east of the Region of Madness, so they merely proceeded directly north. With luck, it wouldn't be too bad.
But it was bad. The mountain became so steep it was impossible to climb normally. They could not go around it, because the sides of the channel they traveled had risen even more steeply. They had either to proceed forward or to retreat all the way to the base and try another approach. None was willing to retreat.
Smash used his gauntleted fists to break out sections of rock, making crude steps for the others. Fortunately, the really steep part was not extensive, and by noon they stood at the top.
It was a lake, hardly on the scale of Ogre-Chobee but impressive enough, brimful with sparkling water. "This must be an old volcano," John said. "I have flown over similar ones, though not this big. We must beware; water dragons like such lakes, especially if they are hot on the bottom."
Smash grimaced. He didn't like water dragons, because they tended to be too much for an honest ogre to handle.
But he saw no sign of such a creature here. No droppings, no piles of bones, no discarded old scales or teeth.
"What are those?" Tandy inquired, pointing.
There were marks on the surface of the water. They were roughly circular indentations, with smaller indentations on one side of each large one. "They look like prints," the Siren said.
"As if some creature walked on the water.
Is that possible?"
Smash put one foot on the water. It sank through. The ripples moved across the prints, erasing them. "Not possible," he decided.
Still, they decided to stay clear of the water until they knew more about it. Seemingly minor mysteries could be hazardous to their health in Xanth. They walked around the west side of the lake, following one of those suspiciously convenient paths because there was no other route between the deep water and the outer face of the mountain.
But as they bore north, following the curve of the cone, they encountered an outcropping of spongy rock. "Magma," Smash conjectured, forcing another subterranean memory to the surface, slightly heated.
"I don't care who it is, it's in our way," Tandy complained. Indeed, the rock blotted out the path, forcing them to attempt a hazardous scramble.
"I shall remove it," Smash decided. He readied his hamfist and pounded one good pound on the magma.
The rock responded with a deafening reverberation. They all clapped their hands over their ears while the mountain shook and the lake made waves.
Finally the awful noise died away. "That magma comes loud!" the Siren said.
"Magma cum laude," the ogre agreed, not hearing well yet.
"It sure is some sound," Tandy said, looking dizzy. The fairy agreed.
They decided they didn't like the sound of it, and would try the other side of the lake, where the way might be quieter. As they walked the path back, an awful moan slid across the water. "What is that?" Tandy demanded anxiously.
"The wailing of whatever made the prints," the Siren conjectured.
"Oh. So these are the prints of wails."
"Close enough." The Siren grimaced. "I hope we don't meet the wail, though. I've had some experience with music on water, and this makes me nervous."
"Yes, you ought to know," Tandy agreed. "My father said you could bring any man to you from afar, if he heard you."
"Yes, when I had my magic," she said sadly. "Those days are gone, and perhaps it is just as well, but I do get lonely."
They approached the east side of the lake. But here they encountered more trouble. An ugly head lifted on a serpentine neck. It was not exactly a dragon's head, and not exactly a sea monster's head, but it had affinities with both. It was not large as monster heads went, but it hissed viciously enough.
Smash was tired of being balked. He did not mess with this minor monster; he reached out with one hand and caught the neck between gauntleted thumb and forefinger.
Immediately another head appeared, similar to the first and just as aggressive. Smash caught this one in his other glove.
Then a third came. This was getting awkward! Had he stumbled onto a whole nest of serpents? Hastily
Smash
smashed the first two heads together, crushing both, and reached for the third.
"They all connect!" the Siren exclaimed. "It's a many-headed serpent!"
Indeed it was! Four more heads rose up, making seven in all. Smash crushed two more, but had to move quickly to prevent the remaining three from burying their fangs in his limbs. He rose to the need, however, by catching one under his feet and the last two in his hands. In a moment all had been crushed, and he relaxed.
"Smash, look out!"
Tandy cried. "More heads!"
Apparently a couple of the ones he had dealt with had not been completely destroyed, and had revived. This was unusual; things seldom recovered from the impact of ogre force. He grabbed these--and discovered they sprouted from the same neck. Their junction formed a neat Y. He was sure he hadn't encountered this configuration before.
"More heads!" Tandy screamed.
"Now there were six more, in three pairs. New heads were growing from the old ones!
"It's a hydra!" the Siren cried. "Each lost head generates two more! You can never get ahead of it!"
"I've got too many heads of it!" Smash muttered, stepping back. The hydra was generating a small forest of hissing heads, each lunging and snapping at anything in range. Two were squaring off at each other.
"You can't kill a hydra," the Siren continued. "Its essence is immortal. It draws its strength from the water."
"Then I shall remove the water," Smash said. "It will be easy to bash a hole in this rim and let the lake out."
"Oh, please don't do that!" the Siren protested. "I'm a creature of water, and I hate to see it mistreated. You would ruin a perfectly lovely lake, and drown many innocent creatures below, and kill many innocent lake denizens. There is an entire ecology in any such body--"
Was the mermaid becoming the conscience of the group? Smash hesitated.
"That's true," John admitted. "Pretty lakes should be left alone. Most of them have much more good than evil in them."
Smash looked at Tandy. "I agree," she said. "We don't want to harm others, and this water is nice."
The ogre shrugged. He didn't want trouble with his friends. As he thought about it, with his amplified Eye Queue intelligence--which remained a nuisance--he realized they were right. Wanton destruction could only beget a deterioration of the environment of Xanth, and that would, in the long run, damage the prospects of ogres. "No harm to others," he agreed gruffly. If any other ogres ever heard of this, he would be in trouble! Imagine not destroying something!
"Oh, I could kiss you," Tandy said. "But I can't reach you."
Smash chuckled. "Good thing. Now we'll have to swim across the lake. Do all of you know how to swim?"
"Oh, I couldn't swim," John said. "My wings would break."
"Maybe you can fly now," the Siren suggested.
"Maybe."
The fairy tried, buzzing her pretty wings, making the flower-pattern blossoms again. She seemed to lighten as the downdraft of air dusted dirt out from the ridge, but she did not quite take off. Then she jumped. A gust of wind passed at that moment, carrying her out over the rim. She agitated her wings furiously, but could not sustain elevation and began to fall.
Smash reached out and caught her before she crashed into the rocky slope. She screamed,
then
realized he was helping her, not attacking her. He set her carefully back on the ledge, where she stood panting prettily and quivering with reaction.
"Not yet, it seems," the Siren said. "But you might sit on Smash's back while he swims."
"I suppose," the fairy agreed faintly. Her little bare bosom was heaving. It occurred to
Smash
that the loss of the ability to fly might be quite disturbing to a creature whose natural mode of travel was flight. He might react similarly if he lost his ogre strength.
They entered the water. Tandy could swim well enough, and, of course, the Siren converted to mermaid form and was completely at home. John perched nervously on Smash's head and was so light he hardly felt her weight. He began stroking across the lake, careful not to splash enough to cause trouble, despite his pleasure in splashing. Some sacrifices were necessary when one traveled in company.
The Siren led the way, easily outdistancing the others. That creature certainly could swim; she was in her element.
Then something loomed from the north. It was huge and dark, like a low-flying thundercloud, scooting across the water. Simultaneously the awful wailing came again, and now Smash realized it came from the cloud-thing. There was also a pattering drumbeat punctuating the wails.
The Siren paused in place. "I don't like this," she said. "That thing is trotting on the surface of the water; I feel the vibrations of its footfalls. And it's headed for us. I could outdistance it, I think; but Tandy can't, and
Smash
can't do much without imperiling John. We had better get out of the water."
"It's coming too fast," John said. "It will catch us before we get back to shore."
She was right. The monster loomed rapidly onward, casting a dark shadow. It was not actually a cloud, but was composed of gray-blue foam, with a number of holes through which the wailing passed, and hundreds of little feet that touched the water. When it moved to one side, they saw the prints left on the surface, just like the ones they had seen before.
The prints of wails.
"Oh, we are doomed!" John cried. "Save yourself,
Smash
; dive under the water, hide from it!"
An ogre hide
from a monster? Little did the fairy grasp the magnitude of the insult she had innocently
rendered.
"No," Smash said. "I'll fight it."
"It's too big to fight!"
"It probably smothers its prey by surrounding it," Tandy said. She was being practical. She seemed much less afraid of things since having discovered the ultimate nature of fear inside the gourd. Monsters were only monsters, when one's soul was intact. "You can't fight fog or jelly."
Smash realized she was probably right. These assorted girls were making more sense than he would have thought before he came to know them. In the water, with a delicate and flightless fairy on his head, he could not fight efficiently anyway--and if there was nothing really solid to punch out, his fists would be of little use. It galled him to concede that there were monsters that an ogre couldn't handle, but in this case it seemed to be so. Curse this Eye Queue that made him see reason!
"I'll lead it away!" the Siren cried. She was hovering in the water, her powerful tail elevating her body, so that it was as if she stood only waist-deep. She would have been a considerable sight, that way, for a human male. It seemed to
Smash
that she should have no trouble attracting a merman, at such time as she found one. "You swim on across the lake," the Siren continued. She set off toward the west, moving with amazing velocity. She was like a bird in flight across the surface of the lake.
When she was a fair distance away, she paused and began to sing. She had a beautiful voice, with an eerie quality, a little like the wailing of the monster. Perhaps she was deliberately imitating it.
The monster paused. Then it rotated grandly and ran toward the Siren, its little feet striking the water without splashing, leaving the prints. That mystery had been solved, though Smash did not understand how the prints remained after the wailing monster moved on. But, of course, the effects of magic did not need any explanation.
Once the monster had cleared the area, lured away by the Siren, Smash and Tandy swam on across. It was a fair distance, and Tandy tired, slowing them; it seemed there were not many lakes this big in the underworld. Finally Smash told her to grab hold of one of his feet so he could tow her. The truth was, he was getting tired himself; he would have preferred to wade, but the water was far too deep for that. It would have been un-ogrish to confess any weakness, however.
They made it safely to the north lip. They drew themselves out and rested, hoping the Siren was all right.
Soon she appeared, swimming deep below the surface. Her tail gave her a tremendous forward thrust, and she was a thing of genuine beauty as she slid through the water, her hair streaming back like bright seaweed, her body as sleek and glossy as that of a healthy fish. Then she came up, her head bursting the surface, her hands rising automatically to brush back her wet tresses, mermaidlike. "My, that was interesting!" she said, flipping out of the water to sit on the rim, her tail hidden in the water, so that now she most resembled a healthy nymph.
"The monster was friendly?" Tandy asked doubtfully.
"No, it tried to consume me. But it couldn't reach below the water because its magic prints keep it above. It tried to lure me close, but I'm an experienced hand at luring creatures, and was too careful to be taken in."
"Then you were in real danger!" Tandy was now very sensitive to danger from monsters that lured their victims, whether by an easy access path or a convenient peephole.
"No danger for me," the Siren said, flinging her damp hair out as she changed to human legs and climbed the rest of the way from the water. "Few creatures can catch my kind in our element. Not that there are many quite like me; most merfolk can't make legs. That's my human heritage. Of course, my sister the Gorgon never was able to make a tail; it was her face that changed. Magical heredity is funny stuff! But I talked briefly with the monster. He considers himself a whale."
"A whale of a what?"
Smash asked.
"Just a whale."
"Isn't that a
Mundane
monster?" John asked. It was generally known in Xanth that the worst monsters were Mundane, as were the worst people.
"Yes. But this one
claims
some whales migrated to Xanth, grew legs so they could cross to inland waters, and then kept the legs for lake-running. Some find small lakes; they're puddle-jumpers. Some find pools of rum; they're rum-runners. He says he's of the first water, a royal monster, a Prince of his kind."