“What did the loins look like?” Dor asked, overcome by morbid curiosity.
Smash paused, considering, then uttered one of his rare nonrhyming utterances. “Ho ho ho ho ho!” he bellowed-and the fragile tunnel began to crumble around them. Rocks dislodged from the ceiling and the walls oozed moisture.
Dor and the ogre fled that section. Dor was no longer very curious about the nature of the loins; he just wanted to get out of this tunnel alive. They were below the ocean; they could be crushed inexorably if the tunnel support collapsed. A partial collapse, leading to a substantial leak, would flood the tunnel. Even an ogre could not be expected to hold up an ocean.
They caught up to the others. There was no crash behind them; the tunnel had not collapsed. Yet.
“This place makes me nervous,” Irene said.
“No way out but forward,” Chet said. “Quickly.”
The passage seemed interminable, but it did trend south. It must have been quite a job for the pirate to excavate this, even with his sky hook to help haul out the refuse. How ironic that the loin should be his downfall, after he had finished the tunnel! They hurried onward and downward, becoming more nervous as the depth deepened.
To heighten their apprehension, the bottom of the tunnel became clammy, then slick. A thin stream of water was flowing in it-and soon it was clear that this water was increasing.
Had the ogre’s laugh triggered a leak, after all? If so, they were doomed. Dor was afraid even to mention the possibility.
“The tide!” Chet said. “The tide is coming in-and high tide covers the entrance. This passage is filling with water!”
“Oh, good!” Dor said, relieved.
Four pairs of eyes focused on him, perplexed.
“Uh, I was afraid the tunnel was collapsing,” Dor said lamely. “The tide-that’s not so bad.”
“In the sense that a slow demise is better than a fast one,” the centaur said.
Dor thought about that. His apprehension became galloping dread.
How could they escape this? “How much longer is this tunnel?” Dor asked.
“You’re halfway through,” the tunnel said. “But you’ll have trouble getting past the cave-in ahead.”
“Cave-in!” Irene squealed. She tended to panic in a crisis.
“Oh, sure,” the tunnel said. “No way around.”
In a moment, with the water ankle-deep and rising, they encountered it-a mass of rubble that sealed the passage.
“Me bash this trash,” Smash said helpfully.
“Urn, wait,” Dor cautioned. “We don’t want to bring the whole ocean in on us in one swoop. Maybe if Chet reduces the pieces to pebbles, while
Smash supports the ceiling-“
“Still won’t hold,” Chet said. “The dynamics are wrong. We need an arch.”
“Me shape escape,” Smash offered. He started to fashion an arch from stray chunks of stone. But more chunks rolled down to splash in the deepening water as he took each one.
“Maybe I can stabilize it,” Irene said. She found a seed and dropped it in the water. “Grow.”
The plant tried, but there was not enough light. Dor shone his sunstone on it; then the plant prospered. That was all it needed; Jewel’s gift was proving useful!
Soon there was a leafy kudzu taking form. Tendrils dug into the sand; vines enclosed the rocks, and green leaves covered the wall of the tunnel. Now Smash could not readily dislodge the stones he needed to complete his arch without hurting the plant.
“I believe we can make it without the arch,” Chet said. “The plant has secured the debris.” He touched a stone, reducing it to a pebble, then touched others. Soon the tunnel was restored, the passage clear to the end.
But the delay had been costly. The water was now knee-deep. They splashed onward.
Fortunately, they were at the nadir. As they marched up the far slope, the water’s depth diminished. But they knew this was a temporary respite; before long the entire tunnel would be filled.
Now they came to the end of it-a chamber in which there stood a simple wooden table whose objects were covered by a cloth.
They stood around it, for the moment hesitant. “I don’t know what treasure can help us now,” Dor said, and whipped off the cloth.
The pirate’s treasure was revealed: a pile of Mundane gold coins-they had to be Mundane, since Xanth did not use coinage-a keg of diamonds, and a tiny sealed jar.
“Too bad,” Irene said. “Nothing useful. And this is the end of the tunnel; the pirate must have filled it in as he went, up to this point, so there would be only the one way in. I’ll have to plant a big tuber and hope it runs a strong tube to the surface, and that there is no water above us here. The tuber isn’t watertight. If that fails, Smash can try to bash a hole in the ceiling, and Chet can shrink the boulders as they fall. We just may get out alive.”
Dor was relieved. At least Irene wasn’t collapsing in hysterics. She did have some backbone when it was needed.
Grundy was on the table, struggling with the cap of the jar. “If gold is precious, and gems are precious, maybe this is the most precious of all.”
But when the cap came off, the content of the jar was revealed as simple salve.
“This is your treasure?” Dor asked the bone.
“Oh, yes, it’s the preciousest treasure of all,” the bone assured him.
“In what way?”
“Well, I don’t know. But the fellow I pirated it from fought literally to the death to retain it. He bribed me with the gold, hid the diamonds, and refused to part with the salve at all. He died without telling me what it was for. I tried it on wounds and bums, but it did nothing. Maybe If I’d known its nature, I could have used it to destroy the loins.”
Dor found he had little sympathy for the pirate, who had died as he had lived, ignominiously. But the salve intrigued him increasingly, and not merely because he was now standing knee-deep in water.
“Salve, what is your property?” he asked.
“I am a magic condiment that enables people to walk on smoke and vapor,” it replied proudly. “Merely smear me on the bottoms of your feet or boots, and you can tread any trail in the sky you can see. Of course, the effect only lasts a day at a time; I get scuffed off, you know. But repeated applications-“
“Thank you,” Dor cut in. “That is very fine magic indeed. But can you help us get out of this tunnel?”
“No. I make mist seem solid, not rock seem misty. You need another salve for that.”
“If I had known your property,” the bone said wistfully, “I could have escaped the loins. If only I had-“
“Serves you right, you infernal pirate,” the salve said. “You got exactly what you deserved. I hope you loined your lesson.”
“Listen, greasepot-“ the bone retorted.
“Enough,” Dor said. “If neither of you have any suggestions to get us out of here, keep quiet.”
“I am suspicious of this,” Chet said. “The pirate took this treasure, but never lived to enjoy it. Ask it if there is a curse associated.”
“Is there, salve?” Dor asked, surprised by the notion.
“Oh, sure,” the salve said. “Didn’t I tell you?”
“You did not,” Dor said. How much mischief had Chet’s alertness saved them? “What is it?”
“Whoever uses me will perform some dastardly deed before the next full moon,” the salve said proudly. “The pirate did.”
“But I never used you!” the bone protested. “I never knew your power!”
“You put me on your wounds. That was a misuse-but it counted. Those wounds could have walked on clouds. Then you killed your partner and took all the treasure for yourself.”
“That was a dastardly deed indeed!” Irene agreed. “You certainly deserved your fate.”
“Yeah, he was purloined,” Grundy said.
The bone did not argue.
