stomping and pounding. Lions yowled as the gauntleted fists connected, and screeched as the hairy feet found flesh. Then Smash picked up two ants by their narrow waists and hurled them into the
nettles. He took a moment to rip a small hemlock tree out of the ground, shaking the locks from its hem, and bit off its top, forming a fair club from the remaining trunk. Soon the path was clear; the ant-lions, like the tangle tree, had learned new respect for ogres.
'You're really quite something. Smash!' Tandy called, clapping her hands. 'You're a real terror when you get worked up. I'll bet there's nothing more formidable than an angry ogre!' She had an excellent view of the proceedings from the elevated path, dodging when an ant flew past. Ant-lions did not normally fly; this was a consequence of being hurled out of the way. Ants were now stuck in a number of the jungle trees.
'Me know who,' Smash grunted, pleased. 'Ogres two.'
She laughed. 'That figures. The only thing tougher than one ogre is two ogres.' She was now standing inverted, her brown tresses hanging naturally about her shoulders as if she were upright. She looked about, from her vantage. 'The ants aren't gone, just backed off. Smash,' she reported. 'Can you come up here?'
Smash shook his head no. But he wasn't worried. He could use the ant paths. If the ants wanted a little more ogre-type fun, he would gladly accommodate them.
They proceeded south, Tandy tilting with the orientation of the aereal path, sometimes upright, sometimes not, enjoying the experience. 'There is nothing much in the caverns like this!' she commented.
Smash tromped along the ant highways, tearing through nettles when he needed to change paths. Soon the nettles and ants were left behind, but the high path continued, so Tandy stayed on it. Smash knew it terminated at the Magic Dust Village, and since they had to pass there anyway, this was convenient.
According to Castle Roogna information, the Magic Dusters had once had a population problem, not being able to hold on to their males, so they had constructed the skyway to encourage immigration. Now there were plenty of people at the village, so the path didn't matter, but no one had bothered to take it down. Smash and Tandy made excellent progress. Now they passed a region of hanging vines. They were twined, almost braided, like queues, and seemed to have eyes looking out from their recesses.
Smash distrusted unfamiliar things in general and dangling vines in particular, so he avoided the Eye Queues. They could be harmless, or they could be bloodsuckers. This was beyond the region of his cubhood familiarity, and anyway, things could have changed in the interim. One could never take magic for granted.
He also kept an eye on Tandy, above, to make sure she did not brush against any vines. As a result, he didn't pay close enough attention to his big feet-and stumbled over a minor boulder that was damming a streamlet, much to the streamlet's annoyance.
The boulder dam shattered, of course; it was only stone. The streamlet gladly flowed through, with a burble of thanks to its deliverer. But Smash suffered a momentary loss of balance, his feet sinking into the sodden riverbed, and he lurched headlong into a hanging vine.
The thing wrapped disgustingly around his head. He snatched at it, but already it was sinking into his fur and his flesh and hurting terribly when he tried to scrape it loose. Since an ogre's course was generally that of most resistance. Smash put both hands to his scalp and scraped-and the burgeoning agony made him reel.
'Stop, Smash, stop!' Tandy screamed from above. 'You'll rip off your head!'
Smash stopped. 'I concur. There is no sense in that.'
Tandy stared down at him. 'What did you say?'
'I said there is no sense in mortifying my flesh, since the queue does not appear to have seriously incapacitated me.'
'Smash-you're not rhyming!'
'Why-so I am not!' he agreed, startled. 'That must be the curse of the Eye Queue; it has disrupted my natural mechanism of communication.'
'It's done more than that!' Tandy exclaimed. 'Smash, you sound smart!'
'That must be a fallacious impression. No ogre is unduly intelligent.'
'Well, you sure sound smart!' she insisted. 'That Eye Queue, as you call it, must have added some brains to your head.'
'That seems reasonable,' he agreed, after cogitating momentarily without effort. 'The effect manifested concurrently with my contact with that object. Probability suggests a causal connection. This, of course, is much worse than any purely physical attack would have been; it has temporarily un-ogred me. I must expunge it from my system!'
'Oh, no, don't do that,' she protested. 'It's sort of interesting, really. I don't mind you being smart.
Smash. It's much easier to talk with you.'
'In any event, I seem unable for the moment to deactivate it,' Smash said. 'It seems I must tolerate this curse for the time being. But I assure you I shall be alert for an antidote.'
'Okay,' she said. 'If that's the way you feel.' 'Indubitably.'
They went on-and now Smash noted things that hadn't interested him before. He saw how erosion had caused rifts in the land, and how the forest stratified itself, with light-indifferent vegetation and fungi at the nether levels and bright, broad leaves above to catch the descending light of the sun. The entire jungle was a cohesive unit, functioning compatibly with its environment. All over Xanth, things were integrating-in his new awareness. How blind he had been to the wonders of magic, all his life!
As dusk closed, the aereal path descended to the ground, and they arrived at the Magic Dust Village. A troll came forth to meet them. 'Ogre, do you come in peace or mayhem?' the creature inquired, standing poised for flight while other villagers hastily manned the fortifications and cleared children and the aged from the region.
'In peace!' Tandy said quickly. 'I am Tandy; this is Smash, who is protecting me from monsters.'
The troll's eyes gaped. This was an unusual expression, even for this type of creature. 'Protecting you from-?' 'Yes.'
'Now, we have no prejudice against monsters here,' the troll said, scratching his long and homely nose with a discolored claw. 'I'm a monster myself, and some of my best friends are monsters. But only a fool trusts an ogre.'
'Well, I'm a fool,' Tandy said. 'This ogre fought a tangle tree to save me.'
'Are you sure you aren't a kidnap victim? You certainly do look good enough to eat.'
Smash did not appreciate the implication, which would have passed him by had he not suffered the curse of the Eye Queue vine. 'My father is Crunch, the vegetarian ogre,' he said gruffly. 'My family has not kidnapped anyone in years.'
The troll looked at him, startled. 'You certainly don't sound like an ogre! Did the Transformer-King transform you to this shape?'
'I was whelped an ogre!' Smash insisted, the first traces of roar coming into his voice.
Then the troll made a connection. 'Ah, yes. Crunch married a curse-fiend actress. You have human lineage; that must account for your language.'
'It must,' Smash agreed drolly. He found he didn't care to advertise his misadventure with the vine. He would be laughed out of the village if its inhabitants learned he was intelligent. 'But I should advise you, purely in the interest of amity, that I have been known to take exception to the appellation 'half-breed.' I am a true ogre.' He picked up a nearby knot of green wood and squeezed it in one hand. The green juice dripped as the wood pulped, until at last there was a pool of green on the ground and the knot had become a lump of coal.
'Yes, indeed,' the troll agreed hastily. 'No one here would think of using that term. Welcome to our table for supper; you are surely hungry.'
'We are only passing through,' Tandy said. 'We're going to Lake Ogre-Chobee.'
'You can't get there from here,' the troll said. 'The Region of Madness intervenes.'
'Madness?' Tandy asked, alarmed.
'From the airborne magic dust we process. Magic is very potent here, and too much of it leads to alarming effects. You will have to go around.'
They did not argue the case. Smash's inordinate intelligence, coupled with his memories of this region, corroborated the information; he knew it would be impossible for him to protect Tandy in the Region of Madness. There were tales of the constellations of the night coming to life, and of reality changing dangerously. In Xanth, things were mostly what they seemed to be, so that illusion was often reality. But illusion could be taken too far in the heightened magic of the Madness. Smash was now too smart to risk it.
