The Stallion's eyes dimmed. "You have navigated the final challenge. You have avoided the ultimate temptation of power. You are free to return to Xanth with your soul intact. The lien is voided."
Suddenly Smash felt completely strong again, his soul restored. "But I need help," he said. "I must borrow three of your nightmares to carry my party out of the Void."
"Nightmares are not beasts of burden!" the Stallion protested, scraping the ground with a forehoof. It seemed this creature, if not actually piqued by Smash's refusal to take over the proffered office, was still less cooperative than he might have been. When one scorned an offer of any nature, one had to bear the penalty.
"The nightmares alone can travel anywhere, even out of the Void," Smash said, knowing he had to find some way to gain the assistance he needed. "Only they can help us."
"They could if they chose to," the Horse agreed. "But their fee is half a soul for each person carried."
"Half my soul!"
Smash exclaimed. "I don't have enough for three!"
"Half a soul, not necessarily your own.
But it is true you do not have enough. Nightmare rides come steep."
Smash realized that he was right back in the dilemma he thought he had escaped. He had placed his soul in jeopardy to rescue Tandy from the gourd; now he would have to do it again to rescue Tandy and Chem from the Void. But if he rescued both, he himself would be lost, for the Eye Queue informed him that two halves of a soul amounted to the whole soul.
Of course, he could rescue only Tandy, the one he had agreed to protect. But he could not see his way clear to leave Chem in the Void. She was a nice creature with a worthy mission. She did not deserve to be deserted. And he had more or less agreed to protect her, too, when her brother Chet had delivered her to him at the brink of the Gap Chasm. "I will pay the price," he said, thinking of the gnome begging for slops.
"Do you realize that you could rescue them and retain your soul by becoming the Master of Night?" the Stallion asked.
"I fear I must go to hell in my own fashion," Smash said regretfully. The Horse obviously thought him a smart fool, and his Eye Queue heartily endorsed the sentiment, but somehow his fundamental ogre nature shied away from the responsibility for damning others. Better to be one of the damned.
"Even in sacrifice, you are ogrishly stupid," the Stallion remarked with disgust. "You are obviously unfit for duty here."
"Agreed," Smash agreed.
"Go negotiate directly with the mares," the Horse snorted. "I'll have no part of this." His eyes flared with their black light.
Then Smash found himself on the plain of the mares. The dark herd charged toward him, circling him in moments, as was their wont. Then they recognized him and hesitated.
"I need two of you to carry my friends to safety," he said. "I know the price."
"Naaaay!" one cried. Smash recognized her as the one he had tried to befriend, the one who had carried Tandy to the Good Magician's castle. That had been involuntary, without a fee--until the coffin had claimed a double fee retroactively. Obviously none of that payment had gone to the mare; it had been a gyp deal all around. But she certainly knew how to carry a person. He was sorry he had not been able to figure out what she wanted from Xanth.
"I must rescue Tandy and Chem," Smash said. "I will pay the fee. Who will make the deal?"
Two other mares volunteered. Smash wasn't sure what use they would have for the halves of his soul, but that was not much of his business. Maybe half souls were bartering currency within the gourd, accounting for status in the nightmare hierarchy. "S.O.D.," he said, cautioned by his Eye Queue.
"Soul on Delivery."
They nodded, agreeing. "Can you find them?" he asked. When they nodded naaay, he realized he would have to go with them, at least to where the girls were. "Well, we'd better introduce ourselves," he said. "I am Smash the Ogre. How shall I know the two of you?"
One of the two struck the ground with a forehoof. She left a circular impression in the dirt, with little ridges, dark spots, and pockmarks. Smash peered at it closely, struck by a nagging familiarity. Where had he seen a configuration like that before? Then he grasped it; this was like a map of the moon, with the pocks like the cheese holes. One of the dark areas was highlighted, and he saw that there was lettering on it: MARE CRISIUM.
"So you're the mare Crisium," he said, making the connection. "Mind if I call you Crisis?"
She shrugged acquiescently. Smash turned to the other. "And who are you?"
The other stomped a forehoof. Her moon-map was highlighted in another place: MARE VAPORUM.
"And you're the mare Vaporum," he said. "I'll call you Vapor."
The befriended mare now came forward, nickering, offering to carry him. "But I have no soul left over to pay you," he protested. "Besides, you're far too small to handle a monster like me."
She walked under him--and suddenly he found that he had shrunk or she had grown, for now he was riding her comfortably. It seemed nightmares had no firmly fixed size.
"Then tell me your name, too," he said. "You are doing me an unpaid favor, and I want to know you, in case I should ever be able to repay it. I never did discover what you wanted from Xanth, you know."
She stamped her hoof. He leaned down over her shoulder, hanging on to her slick black mane that flowed like a waterfall, until he was able to read her map. It was highlighted at a large patch labeled: MARE IMBRIUM.
"You I will call Imbri," he decided. "Because I don't know what your name means."
The three mares galloped across the plain, leaving the herd behind. Little maps of the moon formed the trail wherever their feet touched. It made him hungry to think about it. Too bad the maps weren't real, with genuine cheese!
Soon they passed through a greenish wall and out into the Void. It was the rind of the gourd,
Smash
realized. They were large and the gourd was small--but somehow it all related. He kept trying to forget that size and mass hardly mattered when magic was involved.
They looped once around--and there was the brute ogre, staring into the gourd's peephole. Until this moment, Smash had not quite realized that his body had not accompanied him inside. He had known it, of course, but never truly realized it. Even his Eye Queue had never come to grips with the seeming paradox of being in two places at the same time.
Then he spied Tandy and Chem. They were asleep; it was night, of course, the only time the nightmares could go abroad.
"We'll have to wake them," Smash said,
then
paused. "No--a person has to be asleep to ride a nightmare; I remember now. Or disembodied, like me. I'm really asleep, too. I'll put them on you asleep." He dismounted and went to pick Tandy up.
But his hands passed right through her. He had no physical substance.
He pondered. "I'll have to wake myself up," he decided. "Since my soul is forfeit anyway, I should be able to stay near the nightmares. They aren't going to depart before they get their payment." It was a rather painful kind of security, however.
He went to his body. What a hulking, brutish thing it was! The black fur was shaggy in some places, unkempt in others, and singed from his experiences with the firewall in yet others. The hamhands and hamfeet were huge and clumsy-looking. The face was simultaneously gravelly and mushy. No self-respecting creature would be attracted to the physical appearance of an ogre--and, of course, the monster's intellect was even worse. He was doing Tandy a favor by removing himself from her picture.
"Come on, ogre, you have
work
to do," he grunted, putting out a paw to shake his shoulder. But his hand passed through himself, too, and the body ignored him, exactly like the stupid thing it was.
"Enough of this nonsense, idiot!" he rasped. He put a hamfinger over the peephole. He might be insubstantial in this form, but he was visible. The finger cut off the view. The effect was similar to the removal of the gourd.
Suddenly
Smash
was back in his body, awake. The phantom self had vanished. It existed only when he peered into the gourd, when his mental self was apart from his physical self.
The three mares stood watching him warily. Ordinarily, they would have fled the presence of a waking person, but they realized that this was a special situation. He was about to become one of them.
"All right," he said quietly, so as not to wake the girls. "I'll set one girl on each of you volunteers. You carry them north, beyond the Void, and set them down safely. Then you split my soul between you.
Fair enough?"
The two mares nodded. Smash went to lift Chem, gently.
She weighed as much as he, but he had his full strength now and could readily handle her mass. He set her on Crisis. Chem was bigger than the mare, but again the fit was right, and the sleeping centaur straddled Crisis comfortably.
He lifted Tandy next. She was so small he could have raised her with one finger, as he had Biythe Brassie, but he used both hands. With infinite care he set her on Vapor.
Then he mounted his own mare, Imbri, who had come without the promise of payment. Again the fit was right; anybody could ride any nightmare, if the mare permitted it. "I wish I knew what you want from Xanth," he murmured. Then he remembered that this was irrelevant; he would not be returning to Xanth anyway, so could not fetch her anything.
They moved on through the Void, traveling north. This was the easy part, descending into the depths of the funnel, and Smash saw that the center of the Void was a black hole from which nothing returned, not even light. This the mares skirted; there were, after all, limits.
They galloped as swiftly as thought itself, the mares as dark as the awful dreams they fostered. Smash now had a fair understanding of the origin and rationale of those dreams; he did not envy the Dark Horse his job. If it was bad to experience the dreams, how much worse was it to manufacture them! The Stallion had the burden of the vision of evil for the whole world on his mind; no wonder he wanted to retire! What use was infinite power when it could be used only negatively?
They climbed the far slope of the funnel, leaving the brink of the dread black hole behind, unobstructed by the invisible wall, in whatever manner it existed. In another moment they were out of the Void and into the night of normal Xanth.
Smash felt a horrible weight departing his shoulders. He had saved them; he had gotten them out of the Void at last! How wonderful this normal Xanthian jungle seemed! He looked eagerly at it, knowing he could not stay, that his soul was now forfeit. The mares had delivered, and it was now his turn. Perhaps he would be allowed to visit this region on occasion, in bodiless form, just to renew the awareness of what he had lost, and to see how his friends were doing.
They halted safely beyond the line. Smash dismounted and lifted Chem to the ground, where she continued sleeping, feet curled under her, head lolling. She was a pretty creature of her kind, not as well developed as she would be at full maturity, but with a nice coat and delicate human features. He was glad he had saved her from the Void. Someday she would browbeat some male centaur into happiness, exactly as her mother had done. Centaurs were strong-willed creatures, but well worth knowing. "Farewell, friend," he murmured. "I have seen you safely through the worst of Xanth. I hope you are satisfied with your map."
Then he lifted Tandy. She was so small and delicate seeming in her sleep! Her brown hair fell about her face in disarray, partly framing and partly concealing her features. He deeply regretted his inability to see her through her adventure. But he had made a commitment to the Good Magician Humfrey, and he was honoring that commitment in the only fashion he knew. He had seen Tandy through danger, and trusted she could do all right now on her own. She had fitted a lot of practical experience into this journey!
In a moment, he knew, he would not care about her at all, for caring was impossible without a soul. But in this instant he did care. He remembered how she had kissed him, and he liked the memory. Human ways were not ogre ways, of course, but perhaps they had a certain merit
Through
her he had gleaned some faint inkling of an alternate way of life, where violence was secondary to feeling. It was no life for an ogre, of course--but somehow he could not resist returning the favor of that kiss now. He brought her to his face and touched her precious little lips with his own big crude ones.
Tandy woke instantly. The two mares jumped away, afraid of being seen by a waking person not of their domain. But they did not flee entirely, held by the incipient promise of his soul.
"Oh, Smash!" Tandy cried. "You're back! I was so worried, you stayed in the gourd so long, and Chem said she thought you weren't ready to be roused yet--"
Now he was in trouble. Yet he was obscurely glad. It was better to explain things to her so that she would not think he had deserted her. "You are free of the Void, Tandy. But I must leave you."
"Oh, no.
Smash!" she protested. "Don't ever leave me!" This was becoming rapidly more difficult. Separating from her was somewhat like departing the Void--subtly awkward. "The mares
who
carried you out of the Void, in your sleep--they have to be paid."
Her brow furrowed, in the cute way it had. "Paid how?" He was afraid she wouldn't like this. But ogres weren't much for prevarication, even in a good cause.
"My soul."
She screamed.
Chem bolted awake, snatching up the rope, and the mares retreated farther, switching their tails nervously. "What's the matter?"
"Smash sold his soul to free us!" Tandy cried, pointing an accusing finger at the ogre.
"He can't do that!" the centaur protested. "He went to the gourd to win back his soul!"
"It was the only way," Smash said. He gestured to the two mares. "I think it is time." He looked behind him, locating Imbri. "And if you will kindly carry my body back into the Void afterward, so it won't get in anyone's way out here--"