The doors were learning! He opened this one gently. But it led only to another decoy chamber.
Finally he opened one that showed an outdoor walk. He hurried down this, hurdling a square that he recognized as a covered pitfall-ogres naturally knew about such things, having had centuries of ancestral experience avoiding such traps set for them by foolish men-and emerged into a windy graveyard.
Battered gravestones were all around, marking sunken graves. Some stones tilted forward precariously, as if trying to peer into the cavities they demarked. It occurred to Smash that the buried bodies might have climbed out and gone elsewhere, accounting for the sunkenness of the graves and the suspicions of the headstones, but this was not his concern.
The odor of carrion was stronger out here. Maybe some of the corpses had not been buried deep enough.
A wind came up, cutting around the stone edges with dismal howling. Smash breathed deeply, appreciating it, then concentrated on the business at hand. Tandy!' he called. 'Where are you?' For she had said she was in a graveyard, and this must be the place.
He heard a faint sobbing. Carefully he traced down the source. It was slow work, because the sound was carried by the wind, and the wind curved around the gravestones in cold blue streams, searching out the best edges for making moaning tunes. But at last he found the huddled figure, cowering behind a white stone crypt.
'Tandy!' he repeated. 'It's I. Smash, the tame ogre. Let me take you away from all this.'
She looked up, pale with fright, as if hardly daring to recognize him. Her mouth opened, but only drool came out.
He reached out to take her arm, to help her to her feet.
But she was as limp as a rag doll and would not rise. She just continued sobbing. She seemed little different from her Xanth self. Something was missing.
Smash considered. For once he was thankful for the Eye Queue, because now he could ponder without pain. What would account for the girl's lethargy and misery? He had thought it was fear, but now that he was here, she should have no further cause for that. It was as if she had lost something vital, like eyesight or-Or her soul. Suddenly Smash remembered how vulnerable souls could be, and knew that if anyone were likely to blunder into a soul-hazardous situation, Tandy was the one. She knew so little of the ways of Xanth! No wonder she was desolate and empty.
'Your soul, Tandy,' he said, holding her so that she had to look into his face. 'Where is it?'
Listlessly she nodded toward the crypt. Smash saw that it had a heavy, tight stone door. Scrape marks on the dank ground indicated it had recently been opened. She must have gone inside, perhaps trying to escape the graveyard - and had been ejected without her soul.
'I will recover it,' he said.
Now she bestirred herself enough to react. 'No, no,' she moaned. 'I am lost. Save yourself.'
'I agreed to protect you,' he reminded her. 'I shall do it.' He set her gently aside and addressed the crypt. The door had no handle, but he knew how to deal with that. He elevated his huge bare fist and smashed it brutally forward into the stone.
Ouch! Without his gauntlets, his hands were more tender. He could not safely apply his full force. But his blow had accomplished its purpose; the stone door had cracked marginally and jogged a smidgen outward. He applied his homy fingernails and hauled the door unwillingly open.
A dark hole faced him. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a white outline. It was the skeleton of a man. It reached for him with bone-fingers.
Smash realized where the bodies in the sunken graves had gone. They had been recruited for guard duty and were walking about this crypt. But he was not in the mood for nuisance. He grabbed the skeleton by the bones of its arm and hauled it violently out of the crypt. The thing flew through the air and landed as a jumble of bones. The ogre proceeded on into the hole.
Other skeletons appeared, clustering about him, then - connections rattling. Smash treated them as he had the first, disconnecting their foot-bones from their leg-bones and other bones, causing the bonepile to grow rapidly. Soon the remaining skeletons reconsidered, not wishing to have him roll their bones, and left him alone.
Deep in the ground the ogre came to a dark coffin. The smell was mouth-wateringly awful; something really rotten was in there. Was Tandy's soul in there, too? He picked up the box and shook it.
'All right, all right!' a muffled voice came from the coffin. 'You made your point, ogre. You aren't afraid of anything. What do you want?'
'Give back Tandy's soul,' Smash said grimly.
'I can't do that, ogre,' the box protested. 'We made a deal. Her freedom for her soul. I let her out of this world; I keep her soul. That's the way we deal here; souls are the currency of this medium.'
'The Siren let her out by removing the gourd,' Smash argued. 'She never had to pay.'
'Coincidence. I permitted it, once the deal was struck. The negotiation is sealed.'
Smash had lived and thought like an ogre a lot longer than he had lived and thought intelligently. Now he reverted to convenient old habits. He roared, picked up the coffin, and hurled it against the wall. The box fell to the floor, somewhat sprung, and several ceiling stones 'dropped on it. Nauseating goo dribbled from a crack in it. Dirt sifted down from the chamber wall to smooth the outlines.
'Maybe further negotiation is possible after all,' the voice from the coffin said, somewhat shaken.
'Would you consider trading souls?'
Smash readied his hamfist again. 'Wait!' the voice cried, alarmed. It evidently wasn't used to dealing with real brutes. 'I merely collect souls; I don't have the authority to give them back. If you want the girl's soul now, your only option is to trade.'
The ogre considered. He might smash the coffin and its occupant to pieces, but that would not necessarily recover the soul. If Tandy's soul were in there, it could get hurt in the battering. So maybe it was better to bargain. 'Trade what?'
'Another soul, of course. How about yours?'
This box thought he was a typically stupid ogre. 'No.'
'Well, someone else's. What about that buxom mature nymph out in Xanth, with the sometime fish-tail?
She probably has a luscious, bouncy, juicy soul.'
Smash considered again. He decided, with an un-ogrish precision of ethics, that he could not make any commitments on behalf of the Siren. 'Not her soul. And not mine.'
'Then the girl's soul must remain.'
Smash got another whiff of the stench from the coffin and knew that Tandy's soul could not be allowed to rot there. He still did not consider the deal by which the coffin had gotten Tandy's soul to be valid. He stooped to pick up the battered coffin again.
'Wait!' the voice cried. 'There is one other option. You could accede to a lien.'
The ogre paused. 'Explain.'
'A lien is a claim on the property of another as security for a debt,' the coffin explained. 'A lien on your soul would mean that you agree to replace the girl's soul with another soul-and if you don't, then your own soul is forfeit. But you keep your soul in the interim, or most of it.'
It did seem to make sense. 'How long an interim?'
'Shall we say thirty days?'
'Six months,' Smash said. 'You think I'm stupid?'
'I did think that,' the coffin confessed. 'After all, you are an ogre, and it is well known that the brains of ogres are mostly in their muscles. In fact, their brains are mostly muscles.'
'Not true,' Smash said. 'An ogre's skull is filled with bone, not muscle.'
'I stand corrected. My skull is filled with necrosis. How about sixty days?'
'Four months.'
'Split the difference: ninety days.'
'Okay,' Smash agreed. 'But I don't agree you are entitled to keep any soul, just because you tricked an innocent girl into trading it off for nothing.'
'Are you sure you're an ogre? You don't sound like one.'
'I'm an ogre,' Smash affirmed. 'Would you like me to throw you around some more to prove it?'
'That won't be necessary,' the coffin said quickly. 'If you disagree with the assessment, you must deal with
