“Because I’d be instantly hypnotized,” Chet finished. “Grow me one anyway; it might help.”
“As you wish,” she agreed dubiously. She leaned over the side of the boat to drop a seed on the shore. “Grow,” she murmured.
“Now if there is trouble,” Dor said, “you, Irene, get on the flying carpet. You can drop a kraken seed near the dragon, while the rest of us use the hoop or swim for it. But we’ll do our best to escape the notice of the dragon. Then we can proceed south without further trouble.”
There was no objection. They waited until the hypno-gourd had fruited, producing one fine specimen. Chet wrapped it in cloth and tucked it in the boat. The craft started moving, nudging silently south toward the channel while the occupants hardly dared breathe. Chet guided it in an eastward curve, to intersect the main channel first, so that he could avoid the monster that was presumably waiting due south. In this silent darkness, they could not see it any more than it could see them.
But the dragon had outsmarted them. It had placed a sunfish in this channel, that operated on a similar principle to the sunstone, but it was thousands of times as large. When they came near, the fish suddenly glowed like the sun itself, blindingly. The rounded fin projected above the surface of the water, and its light turned night to day.
“Oh, no!” Dor cried. He had so carefully wrapped his sunstone and now this was infinitely worse.
There was a gleeful honk from the dragon. They saw its eyes glowing as it forged toward them. Water dragons did not have internal fire; the eyes were merely reflecting the blaze of the sunfish.
“Plant the kraken!” Dor cried.
“No!” Chet countered. “We can make it to the mainland shallows!”
Sure enough, the boat glided smoothly across the channel before the dragon arrived. The monster was silhouetted before the sunfish, writhing in frustration. It had planned so well, and just missed victory. It honked. “Curses!” Grundy translated. “Foiled again!”
“What about the sand dune?” Irene asked worriedly.
“They are usually quiescent by night,” Chet said.
“But this isn’t night any more,” she reminded him, her voice taking on a pink tinge of hysteria.
Indeed, the dark mound was rippling, sending a strand of itself toward the water. The sand had enough mass, and the water was so shallow, that it was possible for the dune to fill it in. The ravenous shoreline was coming toward them.
“If we retreat from the dune, we’ll come within reach of the dragon,” Chet said.
“Feed goon to dune,” Smash suggested.
“Goon? Do you mean the dragon?” Dor asked. The ogre nodded.
“Say, yes!” Irene said. “Talk to the dune, Dor. Tell it we’ll lure the dragon within its range if it lets us go.”
Dor considered. “I don’t know. I’d hate to send any creature to such a fate-and I’m not sure the dune can be trusted.”
“Well, string it out as long as you can. Once the dune tackles the dragon, it won’t have time to worry about small fry like us.”
Dor eyed the surging dune on one side, the chop-slurping dragon on the other, and noted how the region between them was diminishing. “Try reasoning with the dragon first,” he told Grundy.
The golem emitted a series of honks, grunts, whistles, and toothgnashings. It was amazing how versatile he was with sounds-but of course this was his magic. In a moment the dragon lunged forward, trying to catch the entire boat in its huge jaws, but falling short. The water washed up in a small tsunami. “I asked it if it wouldn’t like to let a nice group of people on the King’s business like us go on in peace,” Grundy said. “It replied-“
“We can see what it replied,” Dor said. “Very well; we’ll go the other route.” He faced the shore and called: “Hey, dune!”
Thus hailed, the dune was touched by Dor’s magic. “You calling me, tidbit?”
“I want to make a deal with you.”
“Ha! You’re going to be consumed anyway. What kind of deal can you offer?”
“This whole boatload is a small morsel for the likes of you. But we might arrange for you to get a real meal, if you let us go in peace.”
“I don’t eat, really,” the dune said. “I preserve. I clean and secure the bones of assorted creatures so that they can be admired millennia hence. My treasures are called fossils.”
So this monster, like so many of its ilk, thought itself a benefactor to Xanth. Was there any creature or thing, no matter how awful, that didn’t rationalize its existence and actions in similar fashion? But Dor wasn’t here to argue with it. “Wouldn’t you rather fossilize a dragon than a sniveling little collection of scraps like us?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Snivelers are common, but so are dragons. Size is not as important for the fossil record as quality and completeness.”
“Well, do you have a water dragon in your record yet?”
“No, most of them fall to my cousin the deepsea muck, just as most birds are harvested by my other cousin, the tarpit. I would dearly like to have a specimen like that.”
“We offer you that water dragon there,” Dor said. “All you need to do is make a channel deep enough for the dragon to pass. Then we’ll lure it in-and then you can close the channel and secure your specimen for fossilization.”
“Say, that would work!” the dune agreed. “It’s a deal.”
“Start your channel, then. We’ll sail down it first, leading the dragon. Make sure you let us go, though.”
“Sure. You go, the dragon stays.”
“I don’t trust this,” Irene muttered.
“Neither do I,” Dor agreed. “But we’re in a bind. Chet, can you apply your calculus?”
“The smallest of stones can be considered calculi,” Chet said. “That is to say, sarid. Now sand has certain properties . . .” He trailed off, then brightened. “You have seagrass seed?” he asked Irene.
“Lots of it. But I don’t see how-“ Then her eyes glowed. “Oh, I do see! Yes, I’ll be ready, Chet!”
The sand began to hump itself into twin mounds, opening a narrow channel of water between them. Chet guided the boat directly down that channel. The dragon, perceiving their seeming escape, honked wrathfully and gnashed its teeth.
“Express hope the dragon doesn’t realize how deep this channel is,” Dor told Grundy. “In dragon talk.”
Grundy smiled grimly. “I know my business!” He emitted dragon noises.
Immediately the dragon explored the end of the channel, plunging its head into it. With a glad honk it writhed on into the inviting passage.
Soon the dragon was close on their wake. Its entire body was now within the separation in the dune. “Now- close it up!” Dor cried to the dune.
The dune did so. Suddenly the channel was narrowing and disappearing as sand heaped into it. Too late the dragon realized its peril; it tried to turn, to retreat, but the way out was blocked. It honked and thrashed, but was in deep trouble in shallow water.
However, the channel ahead of the boat was also filling in. “Hey, let us out!” Dor cried.
“Why should I let perfectly good fossil material go?” the dune asked reasonably. “This way I’ve got both you and the dragon. It’s the haul of the century!”
“But you promised!” Dor said plaintively. “We made a deal!”
“Promises and deals aren’t worth the breath it takes to utter them -and I don’t even breathe.”
“I knew it,” Chet said. “Betrayal.”
“Do your stuff, Irene,” Dor said.
Irene brought out two handfuls of seeds. “Grow!” she yelled, scattering them widely. On either side the grass sprouted rapidly, sending its deep roots into the sand, grabbing, holding.
“Hey!” the dune yelled, much as Dor had, as it tripped over itself where the grass anchored it.
“You reneged on our agreement,” Dor called back. “Now you pay the penalty.” For the sand in this region was no longer able to move; the grass had converted it to ordinary ground.
Enraged, the dune made one final effort. It humped up horrendously in the region beyond the growing grass,
