Oh. Of course. 'No! I need my hands! He can't eat them.' Though he was uncertain how the ogre could be stopped from eating anything he wanted. Ogres were great bone-crunchers.
The ogre growled again. 'Me not eat whelp; me seek for help,' Grundy said. Then the golem did a double take. 'Crunch!' he cried. 'The vegetarian ogre!'
'Then why does he want to eat my hand?' Dor demanded.
The monster smiled. The expression most resembled the opening of a volcanic fissure. Gassy breath hissed out 'You little loudmouthed twerp, hardly bigger than a burp.'
'That's me!' Grundy agreed, answering his own translation. 'Good to see you again, Crunch! How's the little lady, she with hair like nettles and skin like mush, whose face would make a zombie blush?'
'She lovely as ever; me forsake she never,' the ogre replied. Dor was beginning to be able to make out the words directly; the thing was speaking his language, but with a foul accent that nearly obliterated meaning. 'We have good bash, make little Smash.'
Dor was by this time reassured that the spell of the path had not failed. This ogre was harmless- well, no ogre was harmless, but at least not ravening-and therefore able to mix with men. 'A little smash?'
'Smash baby ogre, 'bout like you; now he gone and we too few.'
'You smashed your baby?' Dor asked horrified, Maybe there was something wrong with the path- spell after all.
'Dodo! Smash is the name of their baby,' Grundy explained. 'All the ogres have descriptive names.'
'Then why is Smash gone?' Dor demanded nervously. 'Troll wives eat their husbands, so maybe ogres eat-'
'Smash wandered away in drizzle; now we search for he fizzle.'
This recent storm was a mere drizzle to the ogres? That made sense. No doubt Crunch used a lightning bolt for a toothpick. 'We'll help you find your baby,' Dor said, grasping this positive mission with enthusiasm. Nothing like a little quest to restore spirits! Crunch's search for his little one had fizzled, so he had asked for help, and few human beings ever had such a request from an ogre! 'Grundy can ask living things, because he knows all their languages, and I'll ask the dead ones. We'll run him down in no time!'
Crunch heaved a grateful sigh that almost blew Dor down. Quickly they went to the spot where the tyke had last been seen. Smash had, Crunch explained, been innocently chewing up nails, getting his daily ration of iron, then must have wandered away.
'Did the little ogre pass this way?' Dor asked a nearby rock.
'Yes-and he went toward that tree,' the rock replied.
'Why don't you just have the ground tell you warm or cold?' Grundy suggested.
'The ground is not an individual entity,' Dor answered. 'It's just part of the whole land of Xanth. I doubt I could get its specific attention. Anyway, much of it is alive-roots, bugs, germs, magic things. They mess up communication.'
'There is a ridge of stone,' Grundy pointed out. 'You could use it.'
Good idea. 'Tell me warm or cold, as I walk,' Dor told it, and started to walk toward the tree. Crunch followed as softly as he was able, so that the shuddering of the land did not quite drown out the rock's voice.
'Warm-warm-cool-warm,' the ridge called, steering Dor on the correct course. Dor realized suddenly that he was in fact a Magician; no one else could accomplish such a search. Irene's plant-growing magic was a strong talent, a worthy one, but it lacked the versatility of this. Her green thumb could not be turned to nonbotanic uses. A King, to rule Xanth, had to be able to exert his power effectively, as Magician Trent did. Trent could transform any enemy into a toad, and everyone in Xanth knew that. But Magician Trent was also smart; he used his talent merely to back up his brains and will. What would a girl like Irene do, if she occupied the throne? Line the paths with shadowboxing plants? Dor's talent was far more effective; he could learn all the secrets anyone had except those never voiced or shown before an inanimate object. Knowledge was the root of power. Good Magician Humfrey knew that. He-
'That's a tangler!' Grundy hissed in his ear.
Dor's attention snapped back to the surface. Good thing the golem had stayed with him, instead of questioning creatures on his own; Dor had been mindlessly reacting to the ridge's directives, and now stood directly before a medium-sized tangle tree. Which was no doubt why Grundy had remained, knowing that Dor was prone to such carelessness. If little Smash had gone there-
'I could ask it,' Grundy said. 'But the tree would probably lie, if it didn't just ignore me. Plants don't talk much anyway.'
Crunch stepped close. 'Growrrh!' he roared, poking one clublike finger at the dangling tentacles. The message needed no translation.
The tangler gave a vegetable keen of fear and whipped its tentacles away.
Dor, amazed, stepped forward. 'Warm,' the ridge said. Dor stepped nervously into the circle normally commanded by the tangler. 'Cool,' the ridge said.
So the little ogre had steered just clear of the tree and gone on. A close call-for tyke and tree! But now the trail led toward the deep cleft of a nickelpede warren. Nickelpedes would gouge disks out of the flesh of anything, even an ogre. If-but then the trail veered away.
The ridge subsided, but there were a number of individual rocks in this vicinity, and they served as well, and on the trail went, meandering past a routine assortment of Xanth horrors: a needle-cactus, the nest of a harpy, a poison spring, a man-eating violent flower-fortunately Smash had been no man, but an ogre, so the flower had turned purple in frustration-a patch of spear-grass with its speartips glinting evilly. Plus similar threats, with which the wilderness abounded. Smash had avoided stepping into any traps, until at last the tyke had come to the lair of a flying dragon.
