Golem in the Gears (10 page)

Somewhere around midnight they heard something, and paused. It was a low whistling or moaning, coming from somewhere ahead, in the tunnel. "Something's there!" Grundy exclaimed, horrified.

"I'm sure it's all right," Bink said nonchalantly. "How can you be so sure things will be all right, all the time?" Grundy demanded.

But Bink only smiled and shrugged. Obviously he knew something Grundy didn't, and that annoyed Grundy inor- dinately.

They waited, for there really was not much else they could do. The noises approached, and in due course a dark shape loomed in the tunnel. Grundy shrank back, and Chester drew his sword, but Bink remained uncon- cerned.

It seemed to be an animal, smaller than the centaur, but massive. It had front feet with enormous claws. It moved along, and it was evident that there was not room

for it to pass them in the narrow tunnel. Yet it did not pause; it just moved on at them.

"Just let the vole pass," Bink said. "It's harmless."

"A voleT' Grundy asked.

"The ghost of one," Bink said.

With that, the creature moved right through Chester, through Bink, and brushed by Grundy with no impact. It was indeed a ghost.

It proceeded on up the tunnel, going its mysterious way, paying the living party no attention.

"I daresay the civilized voles could be nervous about an apparition like that, just as we tend to be about human ghosts," Bink remarked.

Chester resheathed his sword. His hand was shaking. "I daresay they could," the centaur agreed, relaxing.

Grundy understood Chester's embarrassment per- fectly. He had been on the verge of terrified, yet obviously there had been no danger. Naturally voles had ghosts;

every species did. But for a moment it had certainly seemed like a monster!

They resumed their trek down. Grundy pondered again what he had learned about the civilized voles. It made sense that their ghosts could not accompany them; most ghosts were locked to the region of their deaths. But where had the living voles gone, and why? There was still no answer.

As dawn neared, they reached the bottom of the Chasm. They simply set up the bed in the comfortable darkness of the tunnel, then went out to forage for food. "But if you hear the dragon coming," Chester warned Grundy, "get over to us quickly, because you're the only one who can talk with it."

Grundy smiled. That was true enough; without him,

there could be a most awkward misunderstanding! He felt more important.

The bottom of the Gap Chasm was a fairly nice place, at least in this region. There were small trees and bushes, and fruits were abundant. The only thing that was missing was animal life. That was because the Gap Dragoness ate all of that.

For a long time people had considered the Gap Dragon a terrible scourge, serving no useful purpose. Now it was known that the combination of Gap and Dragon served, historically, to protect Xanth from the worse scourges of the Mundane Waves of invasion. That had become clear when the so-called Nextwave (now the new Lastwave) surged through; the Gap had become a major line of defense. Grundy wondered how many other seemingly evil things of Xanth actually had good purposes, when understood. There was a lot more to Xanth than met the casual eye.

They finished their meal and slept. Around noon the ground shuddered, somewhat the way it had when the invisible giant had stridden toward them but less so. This was the familiar whomp! whomp! of the Gap Dragon.

Suddenly the whole party was alert. Grundy stood before the tunnel exit, ready to meet the dragon first. This was his moment of power.

She whomped into view: a long, low, six-legged dra- goness, moving with surprising velocity. Steam belched from her mouth and nostrils, adding to the splendor of her approach. There was hardly a more impressive figure than the Gap Dragon—or Dragoness—in full charge!

"Halt!" Grundy cried, holding his little hand aloft. "We come in friendship!"

The dragoness whomped on, her gaze fixed on Chester.

"Hey!" Grundy said. "Slow down! I told you—"

She steamed right by him, her jaws opening. Chester, no coward, had his sword in hand, ready to defend him- self—but no ordinary centaur was a match for such a dragon, and Chester was no longer in his prime.

Grundy realized that the dragoness was so intent on her presumed prey that she hadn't heard him at all. Drag- ons generally had limited intellects, and could truly con- centrate on only one thing at a time. How could he get through to her before disaster?

He saw a shadow in the sky. A roc was wheeling, perhaps curious about the proceedings. Grundy had a notion.

"Hey, brothers!" he squawked in roc-talk. "Let's go down and haul on that dragon's tail!"

Stella Steamer skidded to a halt, blowing out a vast cloud of steam. "You try it, and you'll get such a chomp—!" she hissed in dragon-language. Then she paused, for the rocs were nowhere close.

"It's me, Stella," Grundy cried. "Grundy Golem! We're here on business!"

"I'm not Stella," she steamed. "I'm Stacey!"

Oops—he had forgotten. "Sorry. I misremembered."

"But I like Stella better," she decided.

"Anything you like," he agreed, as one does when facing a dragon. Now at least he had her attention.

"You're not strays?" she growled.

"Not strays," he informed her firmly. "We came to see you about Stanley."

"Stanley! You found him?" She had of course been advised of the disappearance of the little dragon.

"No. I'm on a Quest to find him. Bink and Chester helped me travel here. I must ride the Monster Under the Bed to the Ivory Tower. But I don't know where the Ivory Tower is. I was hoping you had heard something."

"Nothing," she said with deep regret, exhaling another cloud of steam. "Of course I don't get much chance to talk to most passing creatures before I eat them, and the rocs won't give me the time of day."

"Of course not," Grundy agreed. "They've got stone for brains."

"But even if Stanley wasn't lost, he'd still be too young," she growled, discouraged. She was patrolling the Gap only temporarily; it was normally Stanley's job.

"Not necessarily," he said. "There's been a technolog- ical breakthrough. Reverse-wood and Youth Elixir. He can be any age, instantly."

"Any age!" she steamed, delighted. "We've got to find him!"

"But if you have no notion, then—"

"Maybe the Monster of the Sea would know!" she hissed eagerly. "He came from Mundania thousands of   
years ago, and knows an awful lot about the hiding places of monsters of all types. If anyone would know where the Ivory Tower is, he would!"

"I'll be glad to ask him. Where is he?"

"He skulks off the east coast, foraging up and down the length of Xanth, looking for maidens to eat, or some- thing." She licked her chops.

"The east coast!" Grundy exclaimed. "My friends have to return home; we couldn't possibly get that far in the time they have!"

"I will take you there!" she said, animated by the pros- pect of finding and maturing Stanley.

"You don't understand, Stace—uh, Stella. I'm riding Snortimer, the Monster Under the Bed, and the centaur is carrying the bed."

She nodded. "Those Bed Monsters are sadly limited. Still, I could tote that bed, if that's the only problem."

Grundy realized that this was another lucky break. He could go on without the man and the centaur!

He switched to man-tongue and explained. "Good enough," Bink agreed. "We were about to have to turn back anyway. It's been a fine mini-adventure, but the

wives—"

"I'm never going to get married!" Grundy said. "Wives

are a terror."

Chester waggled a warning finger at him. "You won't

have a choice, if some golem damsel sets her cap for you."

Some golem damsel. That sobered Grundy. There was no such creature; he was the only one of his kind.

"Chameleon should be very pretty by the time I get back," Bink murmured, mostly to himself. Grundy real- ized that there had been method in Bink's generosity; he had been adventuring during the period when his wife was least attractive, and would return when she was most attractive. Even in old age. Chameleon in her pretty phase was something special. Grundy would have settled for a

golem damsel of that nature.

It was agreed. Bink and Chester returned up the tunnel, after tying the bed to Stella's back. At the moment of parting, Bink turned seriously to Grundy. "Be careful," he cautioned, just as if he had paid any attention to that before. Then the Gap Dragoness whomped forward, and Grundy had to cling desperately to the bed to prevent himself from flying off at each whomp. He hoped Snor- timer wasn't getting motion sick. It was a long way across Xanth, especially by whomp-travel, and they were only partway along by nightfall. Grundy had managed to get some sleep during the day, but now Stella needed to rest. They discussed it, and decided that Grundy and Snortimer would go on ahead, and Stella would catch up to them the next day, hauling the bed. She was able to crawl out

of the harness so that she could hunt, and the truth was that Grundy was happy to be elsewhere while she was hunting.

Snortimer started out somewhat wobbly, but got unkinked after a while and moved along well enough. They made good progress along the valley of the Gap, keeping mostly to the shadows where the moonbeams couldn't reach. But after a while a cloud blotted out the moon. That suited Snortimer just fine, but Grundy was annoyed. "Who do you think you are, cutting off my light?" he demanded in human tongue. It was rhetorical;

only King Dor could talk to the inanimate and have it

answer.

The cloud only intensified, sealing off the last vestige of light, so that Grundy could not see at all. He was all right, as Snortimer remained perfectly sure-handed in the dark, but still it bothered him. "You fog-faced puff of dirty mist!" he railed at the cloud. "If you were a living creature I'd prick your mangy balloon!"

There was a rumble of thunder. Oh, no—it was fixing to rain! "What noise is this?" Grundy demanded. "You think you're pretty big stuff, sounding off, don't you! Well, you're nothing but hot air!"

There was a louder peal of thunder. Could the cloud hear him, or understand him? Grundy remembered some- thing Ivy had said about a mean little cloud called Cumulo Fracto Nimbus who thought it was a king. Maybe this was that one. If so, he knew how to insult it—and he was in just the mood to do it.

"You bag of wind," he yelled. "You call yourself a king? You stink to high heaven!"

Now there was no doubt the cloud heard him. There was a gust of wind and a roll of thunder that traversed the Chasm.

Grundy was beginning to enjoy this. He realized that he would get wet, but he could handle that. There wasn't much else the cloud could do, because it couldn't see him in the dark, and he was constantly moving. "You sound like a stink-hom!" he yelled. "Smell like it, too!"

A bolt of lightning struck the ground where he had been. Oh, that cloud was angry! Obviously it could under- stand the human language, and it had a bad-weather tem- per. Ivy had described it perfectly: a grandiose stormcloud with delusions of grandeur.

But now dawn was approaching. That meant they would have to stop and camp for the day—and be a sitting target for the lightning. Grundy hadn't thought that far ahead. What was he to do now? And, to his horror, Grundy realized he had made another oversight: traveling without Snortimer's bed. Now the Bed Monster had no bed to hide under, as the dangerous light came. If the storm didn't get them, the daylight would.

They would simply have to find a place dark enough to protect Snortimer until the dragoness caught up with the bed. "Look for a cave!" Grundy directed his steed in monster-tongue.

Fortunately the Gap was riddled with crevices and caves. Snortimer swerved to the side and up the sheer cliff, surprising him; Grundy hadn't realized how well the monster could climb. Some distance up the side there was an opening, and they crawled in. Inside there was a fairly comfortable cave chamber, quite suitable for their pur- pose. It had enough curvature to guarantee that no beam of light could strike Snortimer as long as he remained away from the entrance.

Grundy, however, didn't need to stay back. He dis- mounted and stood at the front. "Nyah, nyah, you fla-

 
tulent cloud!" he yelled. "Your lightning bolts are too dull to stick in the ground!"

Furious, the cloud hurled a bolt at him. But it missed;

the broad surface of the cliff provided nothing for a bolt to fix on. The bolt bounced off the stone above, and clattered to the base, where it lay dented and harmless, slowly dulling from white-hot to red-hot. In time it would become cold iron gray, and eventually rust away. A spent bolt was a sad thing.

"You call yourself a storm?" Grundy yelled. "I call you Cumulo-Fracto-Numbskull!"

Oh, the cloud was mad! Lightning flashed across it, revealing a puffy cloud-face surmounted by a foggy crown. This was Fracto, all right!

"I can see you're a real dunderhead!" Grundy called, taking off on the "thunderhead" he knew the cloud pre- ferred to be called. "I'll bet even / can make water better than you can!"