The girls were in a sorry state. All five of them were spattered. 'We decided to get you out of the gourd before it got worse,' Tandy said apologetically. 'What happened?'
'I ate a lot of horse-er, manure,' Smash said. 'Instead of cake and pastry.'
'Ogres do have unusual tastes,' John remarked.
Smash chuckled weakly. 'Where's some decent food? I don't want to eat any more gourds, and I'm going to be hungry as soon as I feel better.'
'There'll be food at Goblinland,' Goldy Goblin said.
'How far is that?'
Chem produced her map. 'As I make it, we're close. From what Goldy tells me, the main tribe of goblins is not far from here, as the dragon flies. Just a few hours' walk, except that there's a mountain in the way, so we have to go around-across the Earth works. That complicates it. But I think the lava is cool enough now. We had better get over it before more comes.'
'Like hot vomit,' Goldy muttered.
Smash looked at the conic mountain. It steamed a little, but was generally quiescent. 'Yes-let's cross quickly.'
They started across. Goldy knew a little foot-cooling spell used by goblins and taught it to them. It wasn't real magic, but rather an accommodation to the local landscape. Smash's Eye Queue was cynical, suspecting that any benefit from the spell was simply illusion, the belief in cooler feet. Yet his feet did feel cooler.
They had to skirt the volcano's eastern slope. The cone rumbled, annoyed, but was in its off-phase and could not mount any real action.
The ground, however, was rested. It had energy to expend. It shook, making their travel difficult. The shaking became more violent, causing the hardened lava to craze, to crack, to break up, and to form fissures, exposing the red-hot rock down below.
'Hurry!' Chem cried, her hooves dancing on the shifting rocks. Smash remembered that insecure footing made her nervous. Now it made him nervous, too.
'Oh, I wish I could fly again!' John cried, terrified. She stumbled and started to fall into a widening crack.
Chem caught her. 'Get on my back,' she directed. The fairy scrambled gratefully aboard.
The ground shook again. A fragment turned under the Siren's foot, and she went down. Smash caught her, lifted her high, and saw that her ankle was twisted. He would have to carry her.
Now the volcano rumbled again. It might be in its off-phase, but it wasn't entirely helpless. A new fissure opened in its side, and bright red lava welled out, like fresh blood. It spilled down toward them, shifting channels to orient accurately.
'It's coming for us!' Tandy cried, alarmed. 'This land doesn't like us!'
Smash looked northeast. The goblin territory was far across the treacherously shifting rocks. Already the lava plain was humping like a slow ocean swell, as if trying to break free of its cool crust. Smash knew that if much more fragmentation occurred, they would all fall through that crust into the liquid lava below.
'Too far!' Tandy cried despairingly. 'We can't make it!'
'North!' Chem said. 'It's better to the north!' They scrambled north, though that horizon looked like a wall of fire. The lava crust broke into big plates that, in turn, fragmented into platelets that slowly subsided under the weight of the party. Red lava squeezed up around the edges and leaked out onto the surface. Meanwhile, the fresh lava from the fissure flowed down to join the turbulent plain, further melting the platelets. There was now no retreat.
'Spread out!' Goldy cried. 'Not too much weight on any one plate!'
They did it. The goblin girl was the most agile, so she led the way, finding the best plates and the best crossing places. Tandy followed, glancing nervously back at Smash as if afraid he would be too clumsy.
She did care for him; it was obvious, now that Biythe had given him the hint. But that was hardly worth worrying about at this moment. They might all soon perish.
Next in line was Chem, carrying John on her back, her hooves handling the maneuvering well. Then came Smash, holding the Siren in his arms. Her feet had converted back to the tail; evidently that alleviated the pain in her ankle. However, her tail form was also her bare-top form, and the sight of all that juggling flesh made him ravenous again. He hoped he never got so hungry that he forgot these were his friends.
The edges of the plates depressed alarmingly as they took Smash's weight, for it was concentrated in a smaller area than was the centaur's. Once a plate broke under his weight, becoming two saucers, and he had to scramble, dipping a toe in red lava; it hurt terribly, but he ran on.
'Your toe!' the Siren exclaimed. 'It's scorched!'
'Better that than falling in,' he grunted.
'In case we don't make it,' she said, 'I'd better tell you now. You're a lot of creature. Smash.'
'Ogres are big,' he agreed. 'You're a fair morsel of creature yourself.' Indeed, she had continued to grow more youthful, and was now a sight to madden men. Or so he judged, from his alien viewpoint.
'You're more than I think you know. You could have been where you're going by now if you hadn't let the rest of us impose.'
'No. I agreed to take Tandy along, and the rest of you have helped. I'm not sure I could have handled the dragons alone, or gotten out of the gourd.'
'You never would have gotten into the gourd alone,' she pointed out. 'Then you could have avoided the dragons. Would another ogre have taken Tandy along?'
He laughed. He did that a lot since the advent of the Eye Queue, for things he wouldn't have noticed before now evinced humorous aspects. 'Another ogre would have eaten the bunch of you!'
'I rest my case.'
'Rest your tail, too, while you're at it. If I fall into the lava, you'll have to walk alone.'
It was her turn to laugh, somewhat faintly. 'Or swim,' she said, looking down at the lava cracks.
Now they were at the border. The wall of fire balked them. Goldy stood on the plate nearest it, daunted.
'I don't know how much fire there is,' she said. 'Goblin legend suggests the wall is thin, but-'
'We can't stay here,' Tandy said. 'I'll find out.' And she took a breath and plunged into the fire.
The others stood on separate plates, appalled. Then Tandy's voice came back: 'It's all right! Come on through!'
Smash closed his eyes and plunged toward her voice. The flame singed his fur and the flowing hair of the mermaid; then he was on firm ground, coughing.
He stood on a burned-out field. Wisps of smoke rose from lingering blazes, but mostly the ashes were cool. Farther to the north a forest fire raged, however, and periodically the wind shifted, bringing choking smoke and sprinkling new ashes. To the west there seemed to be a lake of fire, sending up occasional mushroom-shaped masses of smoke. To the east there was something like a flashing field of fire, with intermittent columns of flame.
Chem and John landed beside Smash. The fairy was busy slapping out smolders in the centaur's mane.
'This is an improvement, but not much of one,' Chem said. 'Let's get off this burn!'
'I second the motion,' Tandy agreed. She, too, had suffered during the crossing; parts of her brown hair had been . scorched black. Goldy appeared, in similar condition. None of the girls was as pretty as she bad been.
They moved east, paralleling the thin wall of fire. This was the Region of Fire, but since fire had to have something to bum, they were safe for the moment.
Then a column of white fire erupted just ahead of them. The heat of it drove them back-only to be heated again by another column to the side.
'Gas,' the Siren said. 'It puffs up from fumaroles, then ignites and burns out. Can we tell where the next ones will be?'
They watched for a few moments. 'Only where they've been,' Chem said. 'The pattern of eruption and ignition seems completely random.'
'That means well get scorched,' the Siren said. 'Unless we go around.'
But there was no way around, for the forest fire was north and the lava flows were beyond the firewall to the south.
Also, new foliage was sprouting through the ashes on which they stood, emerging cracklingly dry; it would catch fire and bum off again very soon. It seemed the ashes were very rich fertilizer, but there was very little water
