"Yes, we have adverse monster on our side," Tandy said, patting Smash's knee. She seemed to like the notion.
Smash was just glad he had enough of his strength back to handle such things as snow monsters. But soon he would have to meet the Night Stallion and put it all on the line. He had better get the girls beyond these dangerous wilderness regions of Xanth first, just in case.
Once more they settled down to sleep, grouping closely around the heat wave. By morning it had melted them deep into the snow, so that they were in a cylindrical well. There seemed to be no bottom to this layer of snow; was the whole mountain made of it? That could be, since this was the Water Wing, and snow was solidified water.
Smash bashed out a ramp to the surface, and the party resumed the trek. They were all hungry now, but had to be satisfied with mouthfuls of snow.
As they entered the icy ridge of the mountain, the sun melted the remaining clouds and bore down hard on the snow. The snow began to melt. Smash put the heat wave back in its envelope, but soon they were sloshing through slush anyway.
Then the slush turned to water, and the slope became a river flowing over ice. They tried to keep to their feet, but the entire mountain seemed to be dissolving. The treacherous surface gave way beneath them and washed them all helplessly along in the torrent.
Chem seemed to be able to handle herself satisfactorily in the water; and, of course, the Siren assumed her mermaid form and swam like a fish. But Tandy was in trouble because of the sheer rush of water. She could swim well enough in level water, but this was a cataract.
Smash tried to swim to her, but got bogged down
himself
. He was not really a strong swimmer; he normally waded or whomped through water. But right now he was not at full strength and had been frozen and thawed. This water was becoming too deep and violent for him.
Too much indeed! Smash gulped for air--and got water instead. He coughed and gasped and sucked in a replacement lungful--only to fill up the rest of the way with water.
This was awful! He clawed at his throat, trying foolishly to clear the water while his body struggled for air. But it was no good. The torrent was all about him, finding excellent purchase against his brute body, and he could not breathe.
The agony of suffocation became unbearable. Then something snapped, like the lid of his head, and half his consciousness departed. Smash gave himself up for lost. But it seemed to him that it had been more comfortable to be frozen than to be drowned.
Then he was calm, accepting the inevitable. It was, after all, halfway pleasant doing without air. Maybe this wasn't really worse than freezing. He drifted with the slowing current, relieved, feeling like loose seaweed. How nice just to float forever free.
Then something was tugging fretfully at him. It was the mermaid. She wrapped her arms about one of his and threshed violently with her tail, drawing him forward. But his mass was too much for her. Progress slowed; she needed air herself, with all this exertion. She let him go, and Smash sank blissfully to the depths while she shot up toward the surface.
Slowly he became aware of more tugging, this time on both arms. He tried to shake himself free, but his arms did not respond. He watched himself being drawn upward from the gloom to the light. There seemed to be two figures drawing him, one on each arm, each with a fish-tail--but maybe he was seeing double.
Smash was not sure how long or far he was dragged; time was compressed or dilated for him. But he became aware that he was on a sandy beach, with a nightmare tromping her hooves on his back. He was mistaken. It was a filly centaur; Chem was treading the water out of his body. The experience was almost as bad as vomiting out all the Stallion manure, after that sequence in the gourd.
Almost.
In due course
Smash
recovered enough to sit up. He coughed another bucket or two of water out of his lungs. "You rescued me," he accused the Siren.
"I tried," she said. "But you were too heavy--until Morris helped."
"Morris?"
"Hi, monster!" someone called from the water.
It was a triton. Now
Smash
understood why there had seemed to be two merfolk hauling him along.
The Siren and Morris the Merman.
"We lost the Ear and the heat wave, but we saved you," the Siren said. "And Chem rescued Tandy."
Now Smash saw Tandy, who was
lying
face-down on the sand. The centaur was now kneading her back, using hands instead of hooves. "You breathed water, too?" Smash asked.
Tandy raised her head. "Ungh," she agreed squishily. "Did you--float?"
"When I sank," he answered. "If that's what dying is like, it's not bad."
"Let's not talk about death," Chem said. "This is too nice a place for that. I'm already upset about losing the Ear."
"Not more upset about that than I am with me for losing the heat wave," the Siren said.
"Maybe you should have thrown Smash and me back and saved the magic items," Tandy said, forcing a watery smile.
"It was fated that we lose them," Smash said, remembering his dream. "Soldier Crombie said Tandy would lose three things, and our loss is her loss."
"That's true!" Tandy agreed. "But what's the third thing?"
Smash shrugged. "We don't have any third thing to lose. Maybe two covers it."
"No, my father always points things out right. We've lost something else, I'm sure. We just don't know what it is."
"Maybe one of you should stay and look for the lost items," the merman said. He was a sturdy male of middle age, roughly handsome. It was evident that he could not make legs and walk on land the way the Siren could--he was a full triton.
"Maybe one of us should," the Siren said thoughtfully. After that, it fell naturally into place. This was a pleasant region on the fringe of the Water Wing, where the drainage from the snow mountain became a lake that spread into the mainstream wilderness of Xanth. There was a colony of merfolk here, mostly older, scant of maids. It looked very promising for the Siren.
The three of them--Smash, Tandy, and Chem--proceeded north to the border of the Void, the last of the special regions of central Xanth. "There is great significance to these five elemental regions," Chem said. "Historically, the five elements--Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and the Void--have always been mainstays of magic. So it is fitting that they be represented in central Xanth, and I'm extremely gratified to get them on my map."
"These have been good adventures," Smash agreed. "But just what is the Void? The other elements make sense, but I can't place that one."
"I don't know," the centaur admitted. "But I'm eager to find out. I don't think this region has ever been mapped before by anyone."
"Now is certainly the time," Tandy said. "I hope it's not as extreme as the others were."
Chem brought out her rope. "Let's not gamble on that! I should have tied us when the snow mountain turned to slush, but it
happened
so fast--"
They linked themselves together as they approached the line. It was abrupt. On the near side the pleasant terrain of the merfolk's lake spread southward. On the far side was nothing they could perceive.
"I'm the lightest," Tandy said. "I'll go first. Pull me back if I fall into a hole." She smoothed back her slightly scorched and tangled brown hair and stepped across the formidable line.
Smash and Chem waited. The rope kept playing out, slowly; obviously Tandy was walking, not falling, and not in any trouble. "Is it all right, Tandy?" the centaur called rhetorically.
There was no answer. The rope continued to move. "Can you hear me? Please answer," Chem called, her brow wrinkling.
Now the slack went taut. Chem stood her ground, refusing to be drawn across the line. Smash tried to peer into the Void, but could see nothing except a vague swirl of fog, from this side.
"I think I'd better pull her back," Chem said, swishing her brown tail nervously. It, too, was somewhat bedraggled as a result of their recent adventures. "I'm not sure anything is wrong; maybe she just doesn't hear me."
Chem hauled. There was resistance. She hesitated, not wanting to apply unreasonable force. "What do you think,
Smash
?"
Smash put his Eye Queue to work, but it seemed sluggish this time. His logic was fuzzy, his perception confused. "I don't--seem to have much of an opinion," he confessed.
She glanced back at him, surprised. "No opinion?
You, with your un-ogrish intelligence?
Surely you jest!"
"It best me jest," Smash agreed amicably.
She peered closely at him. "Smash--what happened to your Eye Queue? I don't see the stigma on your head."
Smash touched the fur of his scalp. It was smooth; there was no trace of roughness. "No on; it gone," he said.
"Oh, no!
It must have been washed out when you nearly drowned! That's the third thing we've lost--your intelligence. That certainly affects Tandy's prospects here. You're back to being stupid!"
Smash was appalled. Just when he needed intelligence, he had lost it! What would he do now in a crisis?
The centaur was similarly concerned, but she had an answer. "We'll have to use my intelligence for us both,
Smash
. Are you willing to follow my lead, at least until we get through the Void?"
That seemed to make sense to Smash. "She lead, me accede."
"I'll try to haul her back." Chem drew harder on the rope, and, of course, she had the mass to do it. Suddenly it went slack, and the loose end of it slid back across the line.
"Oh, awful!" the centaur exclaimed, dismayed. She switched her tail violently in vexation. "We've lost her!"
"Oh, awful," Smash echoed, since his originality had dissipated with his intellect. What had happened to Tandy?
"I think I'd better step partway across so I can look without committing myself," she decided. "You stay on this side--and don't let me cross all the way. After a minute, if I don't back out, you haul me out, slowly. Agreed?"
"Me agree, assuredly," he said. He was furious at the Eye Queue for deserting him in his hour of need. Of course he had intended to get rid of the curse--but not just yet. Not at the brink of the Void. Now he was liable to do something ogrishly idiotic, and cost his friends their lives. Even his rhyming seemed ludicrous now; what was the point in it? Not until the curse of the Eye Queue had descended on him had he appreciated how stupid a typical ogre seemed--just a hulking brute, too dull to do more than smash things. Indeed, his very name.
The centaur poked her forepart cautiously through the border. It disappeared into the swirl. Smash felt very much alone, though her hindquarters remained with him. He marveled that a human girl as smart and pretty as Tandy could have any interest in him, even as an animal friend. It must have been the Eye Queue that appealed to her, the intelligence manifesting in the oddest of hosts, the sheer anomaly of the bone-headed genius. Her interest would dissipate the moment she discovered what had happened. That, of course, was best; it would free her full attention for her ideal human-type man, whoever and wherever he might be. Yet
Smash
remained disquieted.
The fact was, he realized now, the curse had had its positive aspect. Like the curse of the moon that human females labored under--one of the things that distinguished them from nymphs--it was awkward and inconvenient, but carried the potential for an entirely new horizon. Females could regenerate their kind; the Eye Queue enabled a person to grasp far broader aspects of reality. Now, having experienced such aspects, he would be returned to his former ignorance.
A minute had passed and gone some distance beyond, and Chem had not backed out. In fact, she was trying to
proceed
the rest of the way across the line. Smash knew he had to stop that; even if he was now too stupid to perceive the danger in committing oneself to a potential course-of-no-return, he remembered the centaur's orders. "Me take up slack, haul she back," he said, inwardly condemning his ogrish crudity of expression. He might be stupid; did he have to advertise it so blatantly?
That started another chain of thought. Part of the vaunted dullness of ogres was not because of the fact, but because they insisted on the distinguishing characteristic of expression. He could have said, "Because my friend the filly centaur, a decent and intelligent person with a useful magic graphological talent, may be in difficulty, I am required to exert myself according to her expressed wish and draw her gently but firmly back across the demarcation between territories. Then we shall consider how best to proceed." Instead, he had spouted the idiotic ditty in the ludicrous manner of his kind. Surely the Eye Queue vine had been as much of a curse in its untimely departure as in its arrival!
There was resistance. Either Chem didn't want to come back, or something was hauling her forward. Smash drew harder on the rope, but the centaur braced forward, fighting it. Something was definitely amiss. Even an idiot could tell that Smash was tempted to give one monstrous tug on the rope and haul her back head over tail, as an ordinary ogre would, but several things restrained him. First, her mass was similar to his own; he might lose his footing and yank himself across the line, in the wrong direction. Second, the rope was bound about her humanoid waist, which was delicately narrow; too harsh a force could hurt her. Third, he was not at full strength, so he might not be able to move her effectively even if properly anchored.
Then the rope went slack. Chem, too, was proceeding unfettered into the Void.
Smash dived for her disappearing rump, his ogrish action preceding his inadequate thought. He was too late. She crossed the line. Only her tail flicked back momentarily, as if flicking free a fly.
Smash caught the tail and worked his way along it, hand over hand. Her forward impetus hauled him right up to the line; then he got his balance, dug his toes in, and brought the centaur and himself to a halt.