text: In the morning a large roundish object floated in the channel. Dor didn't like the look of it. They would have to swim past it to reach the next island. "Is it animal or plant?" he asked.
  
  "No plant," Irene said. She had a feel for this sort of thing, since it related to her magic.
  
  "I'll talk to it," Grundy said. His talent applied to anything living. He made a complex series of whistles and almost inaudible grunts. Much of his communication was opaque to others, since some animals and most plants used inhuman mechanisms. In a moment he announced: "It's a sea nettle. A plantlike animal. This channel is its territory, and it will sting to death anyone who intrudes."
  
  "How fast can it swim?" Irene asked.
  
  "Fast enough," Grundy said. "It doesn't look like much, but it can certainly perform. We could separate, crossing in two parties; that way it could only get half of us, maybe."
  
  "Perhaps you had better leave the thinking to those better equipped for it," Chet said.
  
  "We have to get it out of there or nullify it," Dor said. "I'll try to lead it away, using my talent."
  
  "Meanwhile, I'll start my stunflower," Irene said.
  
  "Thanks for the vote of confidence." But Dor couldn't blame her; he had had success before in tricking monsters with his talent, but it depended on the nature and intelligence of the monster. He hadn't tried it on the water dragon, knowing that effort would be wasted. This sea nettle was a largely unknown quantity. It certainly didn't look smart.
  
  He concentrated on the water near the nettle. "Can you do imitations?" he asked it. The inanimate often thought it had talent of this nature, and the less talent it had, the more vain it was about it. Once, years ago, he had caused water to imitate his own voice, leading a triton a merry chase.
  
  "No," the water said.
  
  Oh. "Well, repeat after me: 'Sea nettle, you are a big blob of blubber.'"
  
  "Huh?" the water asked.
  
  He would have to encounter a stupid quantity of water! Some water was volatile in its wit, with cleverness flowing freely; some just lay there in puddles. "Blob of blubber!" he repeated.
  
  "You're another!" the water retorted.
  
  "Now say it to the sea nettle."
  
  "You're another!" the water said to the sea nettle.
  
  The others of Dor's party smiled. Irene's plant was growing nicely.
  
  "No!" Dor snapped, his temper shortening. "Blob of blubber."
  
  "No blob of blubber!" the water snapped.
  
  The sea nettle's spines wiggled. "It says thank you," Grundy reported.
  
  This was hopeless. In bad temper, Dor desisted.
  
  "The flower is almost ready," Irene said. "It's a bit like the Gorgon; it can't stun you if you don't look at it. So we'd better all line up with our backs to it—and don't look back. There'll be no returning this way; once a plant like this matures, I can't stop it."
  
  They lined up. Dor heard the rustle of rapidly expanding leaves behind him. This was nervous business!
  
  "It's blossoming," Grundy said. "It's beginning to feel its power. Oh, it's a bad one!"
  
  "Sure it's a bad one," Irene agreed. "I picked the best seed. Start wading into the channel. The flower will strike before we reach the sea nettle, and we want the nettle's attention directed this way."
  
  They waded out. Dor suddenly realized how constrictive his clothing would be in the water. He didn't want anything hampering him as he swam by the nettle. He started removing his apparel. Irene, apparently struck by the same thought, quickly pulled off her skirt and blouse.
  
  "Dor's right," Grundy remarked. He was riding Chet's back. "You do have nice legs. And that's not all."
  
  "If your gaze should stray too far from forward," Irene said evenly, "it could encounter the ambience of the stunflower."
  
  Grundy's gaze snapped forward. So did Chet's, Smash's, and Dor's. But Dor was sure there was a grim smirk on Irene's face. At times she was very like her mother.
  
  "Hey, the flower's bursting loose!" Grundy cried. "I can tell by what it says; it has a bold self-image. What a head on that thing!"
  
  Indeed, Dor could feel a kind of heat on his bare back. The power of the flower was now being exerted.
  
  But the sea nettle seemed unaffected. It quivered, moving toward them. Its headpart was gilled like a toadstool all around. Driblets of drool formed on its surface.
  
  "The nettle says it will sting us all so hard—oooh, that's obscene!" Grundy said. "Let me see if I can render a properly effective translation—"
  
  "Keep moving," Irene said. "The flower's incipient."
  
  "Now the flower's singing its song of conquest," Grundy reported, and broke into the song: "I'm the one flower, I'm the STUNflower!"
  
  At the word "stun" there was a burst of radiation that blistered their backs. Dor and the others fell forward into the channel, letting the water cool their burning flesh.
  
  The sea nettle facing the flower, stiffened. Its surface glazed. The drool crystallized. The antennae faded and turned brittle. It had been stunned.
  
  They swam by the nettle. There was no reaction from the monster. Dor saw its mass extending down into the depths of the channel with huge stinging tentacles. That thing certainly could have destroyed them all, had it remained animate.
  
  They completed their swim in good order, Chet and Grundy in the lead, then Dor, Smash, and finally Irene. He knew she could swim well enough; she was staying back so the others would not view her nakedness. She wasn't actually all that shy about it; it was mainly her sense of propriety, developing apace with her body, and her instinct for preserving the value of what she had by keeping it reasonably scarce. It was working nicely; Dor was now several times as curious about her body as he would have been had he seen it freely. But he dared not look; the stunning radiation of the stunflower still beat upon the back of his head.
  
  They found the shallows and trampled out of the water. "Keep going until shaded from the flower," Irene called. "Don't look back, whatever you do!"
  
  Dor needed no warning. He felt the heat of stun travel down his back, buttocks, and legs as he emerged from the water. What a monster Irene had unleashed! But it had done its job, when his own talent had failed; it had gotten them safely across the channel and past the sea nettle.
  
  They found a tangle of purple-green bushes and maneuvered to put them between their bodies and the stunflower. Now Dor could put his clothing back on; he had kept it mostly dry by carrying it clenched in his teeth, the magic sword strapped to his body.
  
  "You have nice legs, too," Irene said behind him, making him jump. "And that's not all."
  
  Dor found himself blushing. Well, he had it coming to him. Irene was already dressed; girls could change clothing very quickly when they wanted to.
  
  They moved on south, but it was a long time before Dor lost his nervousness about looking back. That stunflower . ..
  
  Chet halted. "What's this?" he asked.
  
  The others looked. There was a flat wooden sign set in the ground. On it was neatly printed NO LAW FOR THE LOIN.
  
  It was obvious that no one quite understood this message, but no one wanted to speculate on its meaning. At last Dor asked the sign: "Is there any threat to us nearby?"
  
  "No," the sign said.
  
  They went on, each musing his private musings. They had come to this island naked; could that relate? But obviously that sign had been there long before their coming. Could it be a misspelling? he wondered. But his own spelling was so poor, he hesitated to draw that conclusion.
  
  Now they came to a densely wooded marsh. The trees were small but closely set; Dor and Irene could squeeze between them, but Smash could not, and it was out of the question for Chet.
  
  "Me make a lake," Smash said, readying his huge hamfist. With the trees gone, this would be a more or less open body of murky water.
  
  "No, let's see if we can find a way through," Dor said. "King Trent never liked to have wilderness areas wantonly destroyed, for some reason. And if we make a big commotion, it could attract whatever monsters there are."
  
  They skirted the thicket and soon came across another sign: THE LOIN WALKS WHERE IT WILL. Near it was a neat, dry path through the forest, elevated slightly above the swamp.
  
  "Any danger here?" Dor inquired.
  
  "Not much," the sign said.
  
  They used the path. As they penetrated the thicket, there were rustlings in the trees and slurpings in the muck below. "What's that noise?" Dor asked, but received no answer. This forest was so dense there was nothing inanimate in it; the water was covered with green growth, and the path itself was formed of living roots.
  
  "I'll try," Grundy said. He spoke in tree language, and after a moment reported: "They are cog rats and skug worms; nothing to worry about as long as you don't turn your back on them."
  
  The rustlings and slurpings became louder. "But they are all around us!" Irene protested. "How can we avoid turning our backs?"
  
  "We can face in all directions," Chet said. "I'll go forward; Grundy can ride me facing backward. The rest of you can look to either side."
  
  They did so, Smash on the left, Dor and Irene on the right. The noises stayed just out of sight. "But let's get on out of this place!" Irene said.
  
  "I wonder how the loin makes out, since this seems to be its path," Dor said.
  
  As if in answer to his question, they came upon another sign: THE LOIN IS LORD OF THE JUNGLE. Obviously the cog rats and skug worms didn't dare bother the loin.
  
  "I am getting more curious about this thing," Irene said. "Does it hunt, does it eat, does it play with others of its kind? What is it?"
  
  Dor wondered, too, but still hesitated to state his conjectures. Suppose it wasn't a misspelling? How, then, would it hunt, eat, and play?
  
  They hurried on and finally emerged from the thicket—only to encounter another sign. THE LOIN SHALL LIE WITH THE LAMB.
  
  "What's a lamb?" Irene asked.
  
  "A Mundane creature," Chet said. "Said to be harmless, soft, and cuddly, but stupid."
  
  "That's the kind the loin would like," she muttered darkly.
  
  Still no one openly expressed conjectures about the nature of this creature. They traveled on down to the southern tip of this long island. The entire coastline of Xanth, Chet explained, was bordered by barrier reefs that had developed into island chains; this was as good and safe a route as they could ask for, since they no longer had a boat. There should be very few large predators on the islands, since there was insufficient hunting area for them, and the sea creatures could not quite reach the interiors of the isles. But no part of Xanth was wholly safe. All of them were ready to depart this Isle of the Loin.
  
  As they came to the beach, they encountered yet another sign: A PRIDE OF LOINS. And a roaring erupted behind them, back along the path in the thicket. Something was coming—and who could doubt what it was?
  
  "Do we want to meet a pride of loins?" Chet asked rhetorically.
  
  "But do we want to swim through that?" Grundy asked.
  
  They looked. A fleet of tiger sharks had sailed in while Dor's party stood on the beach. Each had a sailfin and the head of a tiger. They crowded in as close to the shore as they could reach, snarling hungry welcome.
  
  "I think we're between the dragon and the dune again," Grundy said.
  
  "I can stop the tiger sharks," Irene said. "I have a kraken seaweed seed."
  
  "And I still have the hypno-gourd; that should stop a loin," Chet said. "Assuming it's a case of misspelling. There is a Mundane monster like the front half of a tiger shark, called a—"
  
  "But there must be several loins in a pride," Grundy said. "Unless it's just one loin standing mighty proud."
  
  "Me fight the fright," Smash said.
  
  "A pride might contain twenty individuals," Chet said. "You might occupy half a dozen, Smash—but the remaining dozen or so would have opportunity to eat up the rest of us. If that is what they do."
  
  "But we don't know there are that many," Irene protested uncertainly.
  
  "We've got to get out of here!" Grundy cried. "Oh, I never worried about my flesh when I was a real golem!"
  
  "Maybe you weren't as obnoxious then," Irene suggested. "Besides which, you didn't have any flesh then."
  
  But the only way to go was along the beach—and the tiger sharks paced them in the water. "We can't escape either menace this way," Irene said. "I'm planting my kraken." She tossed a seed into the water. "Grow, weed!"
  
  Chet held forward the hypno-gourd that he had retained through all their mishaps, one palm covering the peephole. "I'll show this to the first loin, regardless."
  
  Smash joined him. "Me reckon the secon'," he said, his hamfists at the ready. "An' nerd the third."
  
  "You're the Magician," Grundy told Dor. "Do something."
  
  Dor made a wild attempt. "Anything—is there any way out of here?"
  
  "Thought you'd never ask," the sand at his feet said. "Of course there's a way out."
  
  "You know a way?" Dor asked, gratified.
  
  "No."
  
  "For goodness' sake!" Irene exclaimed. "What an idiot!"
  
  "You'd be stupid, too," the sand retorted, "if your brains were fragmented mineral."
  
  "I was referring to him!" she said, indicating Dor. "To think they call him a Magician! All he can do is play ventriloquist with junk like you."
  
  "That's telling him," the sand agreed. "That's a real load of sand in his eyes."
  
  "Why did you say there was a way out if you don't know it?" Dor demanded.
  
  "Because my neighbor the bone knows it."
  
  Dor spotted the bone and addressed it. "What's the way out?"
  
  "The tunnel, idiot," the bone said.
  
  The sound of the pride of loins was looming louder. The tiger sharks were snarling as the growing kraken weed menaced them. "Where's the tunnel?" Dor asked.
  
  "Right behind you, at the shore," the bone said. "I sealed it off, took three steps, and fell prey to the loins."
  
  "I don't see it," Dor said.
  
  "Of course not; the high tide washes sand over it. Last week someone goosed the tide and it dumped a lot more sand. I'm the only one who can locate the tunnel now."
  
  Dor picked up the bone. It resembled the thighbone of a man. "Locate the tunnel for me."
  
  "Right there, where the water laps. Scrape the sand away." It angled slightly in his hand, pointing.
  
  Dor scraped, and soon uncovered a boulder. "This seals it?" he asked.
  
  "Yes," the bone said. "I hid my pirate treasure under the next island and tunneled here so no one would know. But the loins—"
  
  "Hey, Smash," Dor called. "We have a boulder for you to move."
  
  "Oh, I wouldn't," the bone cautioned. "That's delicately placed so the thieves can't force it. The tunnel will collapse."
  
  "Well, how do we get in, then?"
  
  "You have to use a sky hook to lift the boulder out without jarring the sides."
  
  "We don't have a sky hook!" Dor exclaimed angrily.
  
  "Of course you don't. That was my talent, when I was alive. No one but me could safely remove that boulder. I had everything figured, except the loin."
  
  As the bone spoke, the kraken weed, having driven back the tiger sharks, was questing toward the shore. Soon it would be more of a menace to them than the tiger sharks had been.
  
  "Any progress?" Chet asked. "I do not want to rush you, but I calculate we have thirty seconds before the loins, whatever they are, burst out of the forest."
  
  "Chet!" Dor exclaimed. "Make this boulder into a pebble! But don't jar anything."
  
  The centaur touched the boulder, and immediately it shrank. Soon it was a pebble that fell into the hole beneath it. The passage was open.
  
  "Jump in!" Dor cried.
  
  Irene was startled. "Who, me?"
  
  "Close enough," Grundy said. "Want to stand there and show off your legs to the loins?"
  
  Irene jumped in. "Say, this is neat!" she called from below, her voice echoing hollowly. "Let me just grow something to illuminate it—"
  
  "You next," Dor said to Chet. "Try not to shake the tunnel; it's not secure." Chet jumped in with surprising delicacy, Grundy with him.
  
  "Okay, Smash," Dor said.
  
  "No go," the ogre said, bracing to face the land menace. "Me join the loin." And he slammed one huge fist into a hammy palm with a sound like a crack of thunder.
  
  Smash wanted to guard the rear. Probably that was best. Otherwise the loins might pursue them into the tunnel. "Stand next to the opening," Dor said. "When you're ready, jump in and follow us. Don't wait too long. Soon the kraken will reach here; that will stop the loins, I think. Don't tangle with the kraken; we need it to stand guard after you rejoin us."
  
  The ogre nodded. The bellow of the loins became loud. Dor jumped in the hole.
  
  He found himself in a man-sized passage, leading south, under the channel. The light from the entrance faded rapidly. But Irene had thoughtfully planted starflowers along the way, and their pinpoint lights marked the progress of the tunnel, Dor paused to unwrap his midnight sunstone; its beam helped considerably.
  
  As Dor walked, he heard the approach of the pride of loins outside. Smash made a grunt of surprise. Then there was the sound of contact. "What's going on?" Dor cried, worried.
  
  "The ogre just threw a dandyloin to the kraken," the pebble in the mouth of the tunnel said. "Now he's facing up to their leader, Sir Loin Stake. He's tough and juicy."
  
  "Smash, come on!" Dor cried. "Don't push your luck!"
  
  The ogre's reply was muffled. All Dor heard was ". . . luck!"
  
  "Oooo, what you said!" the pebble exclaimed. "Wash out your mouth with soapstone!"
  
  In a moment Smash came lumbering down the tunnel, head bowed to clear the ceiling. A string of kraken weed was strewn across his hairy shoulder. Evidently he had held off the loins until the kraken took over the vicinity. "Horde explored, adored the gourd," he announced, cracking a smile like a smoking cleft in a lightning-struck tree. Those who believed ogres had no sense of humor were obviously mistaken; Smash could laugh with the best, provided the joke was suitably fundamental.
  
  "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.
  
  "Um, 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 burns, 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 pur-loined," Grundy said.
  
  The bone did not argue.
  
  "Oops," Chet said. He reached down and ripped something from his foreleg, just under the rising waterline. It was a tentacle from the kraken.
  
  "I was afraid of that," Irene said. "That weed is way beyond my control. It won't stop growing if I tell it to."
  
  Dor drew his sword. "I'll cut off any more tentacles," he said. "They can't come at me too thickly here at the end of the tunnel. Go ahead and start your tuber, Irene."
  
  She dipped into her seedbag. "Oh-oh. That seed must've fallen out somewhere along the way. It's not here."
  
  They had had a violent trip on the raft; the seed could have worked loose anywhere. "Chet and Smash," Dor said without pause, "go ahead and make us a way out of here, if you can. Irene, if you have another stabilization plant—"
  
  She checked. "That I have."
  
  They got busy. Dor faced back down the dark tunnel as the water rose to thigh level, spearing at the dark liquid with his sword, shining the sunstone here and there. The sounds of the ogre's work grew loud. "Water, tell me when a tentacle's coming," he directed. But there was so much crashing behind him as Smash pulverized the rock of the ceiling that he could not hear the warnings of the water. A tentacle caught his ankle and jerked him off his feet. He choked on water as another tentacle caught his sword arm. The kraken had him—and he couldn't call for help!
  
  "What's going on here?" Grundy demanded. "Are you going swimming while the rest of us work?" Then the golem realized that Dor was in trouble. "Hey, why didn't you say something? Don't you know the kraken's got you?"
  
  The kraken seaweed certainly had him! The tentacles were dragging him back down the tunnel, half drowning.
  
  "Well, somebody's got to do something!" Grundy said, as though bothered by an annoying detail. "Here, kraken—want a cookie?" He held out a gold coin, which seemed to weigh almost as much as he did.
  
  A tentacle snatched the coin away, but in a moment discovered it to be inedible and dropped it.
  
  Grundy grabbed a handful of diamonds. "Try this rock candy," he suggested. The tentacle wrapped around the gems—and got sliced by their sharp edges. Ichor welled into the water as the tentacle thrashed in pain.
  
  "Now there's a notion," Grundy said. He swam to where Dor was still being dragged along, and sliced with another diamond, cutting into the tentacles. They let go, stung, though the golem was only able to scratch them, and Dor finally gasped his way back to his feet, waist-deep in coloring water.
  
  "I have to go help the others," Grundy said. "Yell if you get in more trouble."
  
  Dor fished in the water and recovered his magic sword and the shining sunstone. He was more than disheveled and disgruntled. He had had to be bailed out by a creature no taller than the span of his hand. Some hero he was!
  
  But the others had had better success. A hole now opened upward, and daylight glinted down. "Come on, Dor!" Grundy called. "We're getting out of here at last!"
  
  Dor crammed coins and diamonds into one pocket with the sunstone, and the jar of salve into another. Smash and Chet were already scrambling out the top, having had to mount the new passage as they extended it. The centaur was actually pretty good at this sort of climbing because he had six extremities; four or five were firmly braced in crevices while one or two were searching for new holds. Grundy had no trouble; his small weight allowed him to scramble freely. Only Dor and Irene remained below.
  
  "Hurry up, slowpoke!" she called. "I can't wait forever!"
  
  "Start up first," he called. "I'm stashing the treasure."
  
  "Oh, no!" she retorted. "You just want to see up my skirt!"
  
  "If I do, that's my profit," he said. "I don't want this hole collapsing on you." For, indeed, gravel and rocks were falling down as Chet's efforts dislodged them. The whole situation seemed precarious, despite the effort of the plant Irene had grown to help stabilize the wall.
  
  "There is that," she agreed nervously. She started to climb, while Dor completed his stashing.
  
  The kraken's tentacles, given respite from the attacks of sword and diamond, quested forward again. The water was now chest-high on Dor, providing the weed ample play. "There's one!" the water said, and Dor stabbed into the murky fluid. He was rewarded by a jerk on his sword that indicated he had speared something that flinched away. For a creature as bloodthirsty as the kraken, it certainly was finicky about pinpricks!
  
  "There's another!" the water cried, enjoying this game. Dor stabbed again. But it was hard to do much damage, despite the magic skill the sword gave him, since he couldn't slash effectively through water. Stabbing only hurt the tentacles without doing serious damage. Also, the weed was learning to take evasive action. It wasn't very smart, but it did learn a certain minimum under the constant prodding of pain.
  
  Dor started to climb, at last. But to do this he had to put away his sword, and that gave the tentacles a better chance at him. Also, the gold was very solid for its size and weighed him down. As he drew himself out of the water, a tentacle wrapped around his right knee and dragged him down again.
  
  Dor's grip slipped, and he fell back into the water. Now three more tentacles wrapped themselves around his legs and waist. That kraken had succeeded in infiltrating this tunnel far more thoroughly than Dor had thought possible! The weed must be an enormous monster now, since this must be only a fraction of its activity.
  
  Dor clenched his teeth, knowing that no one else could help him if he got dragged under this time, and drew his sword again. He set the edge carefully against a tentacle and sawed. The magically sharp edge sliced through the tender flesh of the kraken, cutting off the extremity. The tentacle couldn't flinch away because it was wrapped around Dor; its own greed anchored it. Dor repeated the process with the other tentacles until he was free in a milky, viscous pool of kraken blood. Then he sheathed the sword again and climbed.
  
  "Hey, Dor—what's keeping you?" Irene called from halfway up.
  
  "I'm on my way," he answered, glancing up. But as he did, several larger chunks of rock became dislodged, perhaps by the sound of their voices, and rattled down. Dor stood chest-deep in the water, shielding his head with his arms.
  
  "Are you all right?" she called.
  
  "Just stop yelling!" he yelled. "It's collapsing the passage!" And he shielded his head again from the falling rocks. This was hellish!
  
  "Oh," she said faintly, and was quiet.
  
  Another tentacle had taken hold during this distraction. The weed was getting bolder despite its losses, Dor sliced it away, then once more began his climb. But now ichor from the monster was on his hands, making his hold treacherous. He tried to rinse off his hands, but the stuff was all through the water. With his extra weight, he could not make it.
  
  Dor stood there, fending off tentacles, while Irene scrambled to the surface. "What am I going to do?" he asked, frustrated.
  
  "Ditch the coins, idiot," the wall said.
  
  "But I might need them," Dor protested, unwilling to give up the treasure.
  
  "Men are such fools about us," a coin said from his pocket. "This fool will die for us—and we have no value in Xanth."
  
  It did make Dor wonder. Why was he burdening himself with this junk? Wealth that was meaningless, and a magic salve that was cursed. He could not answer—yet neither could he relinquish the treasure. Just as the krak-en was losing tentacles by anchoring them to his body, he was in danger of losing his life by anchoring it to wealth—and he was no smarter about it than was the weed.
  
  Then a tentacle dangled down from above, Dor shied away; had the weed found another avenue of attack? He whipped up his sword; in air it was far more effective. "You can't nab me that way, greedy-weedy!" he said.
  
  "Hey, watch your language," the tentacle protested. "I'm a rope."
  
  Dor was startled. "Rope? What for?"
  
  "To pull you up, dumbbell," it said. "What do you think a rescue rope is for?"
  
  A rescue rope! "Are you anchored?"
  
  "Of course I'm anchored!" it said indignantly. "Think I don't know my business? Tie me about you and I'll rescue you from this foul hole."
  
  Dor did so, and soon he was on his way, treasure and all. "Aw, you lucked out," the coin in his pocket said.
  
  "What do you care?"
  
  "Wealth destroys men. It is our rite of passage: destroy a man. We were about to destroy you, and you escaped through no merit of your own."
  
  "Well, I'm taking you with me, so you'll have another chance."
  
  "There is that," the coin agreed, brightening.
  
  Soon Dor emerged from the hole. Chet and Smash were hauling on the rope, drawing him up, while Grundy called directions so that no snag occurred. "What were you doing down there?" Irene demanded. "I thought you'd never come up!"
  
  "I had some trouble with the kraken," Dor said, showing off a fragment of tentacle that remained hooked to his leg.
  
  It was now latening afternoon. "Any danger here?" Dor asked the ground.
  
  "There's a nest of wyverns on the south beach of this island," the ground replied. "But they hunt only by day. It's quite a nest, though."
  
  "So if we camp here at the north end we'll be safe?"
  
  "Should be," the ground agreed grudgingly.
  
  "If the wyverns hunt by day, maybe we should trek on past them tonight," Irene said.
  
  Smash smiled. "We make trek, me wring neck," he said, his brute mitts suggesting what he would do to an unfortunate wyvern. The ogre seemed larger now, taller and more massive than he had been, and Dor realized that he probably was larger; ogres put on growth rapidly in their teen years.
  
  But Dor was too tired to do it. "I've got to rest," he said.
  
  Irene was unexpectedly solicitous. "Of course you do. You stood rearguard, fighting off the kraken, while we escaped. I'll bet you wouldn't have made it out at all if Chet hadn't found that vine-rope."
  
  Dor didn't want to admit that the weight of the gold had prevented him from climbing as he should have done. "Guess I just got tired," he said.
  
  "The fool insisted on bringing us gold coins along," the coin blabbed loudly from his pocket.
  
  Irene frowned. "You brought the coins? We don't need them, and they're awful heavy."
  
  Dor sat down heavily on the beach, the coins jangling. "I know."
  
  "What about the diamonds?"
  
  "Them, too," he said, patting the other pocket, though he wasn't sure which pocket he had put them in.
  
  "I do like diamonds," she said. "I regard them as friends." She helped him get his jacket off, then his wet shirt. He had avoided the Kingly robes for this trip, but his garden-variety clothing seemed hardly better now. "Dor! Your arms are all scraped!"
  
  "That's the work of the kraken," Grundy said matter-of-factly. "It hooked his limbs and dragged him under. I had to carve it with diamonds to make it let go."
  
  "You didn't tell me it was that bad!" she exclaimed to Dor. "Krakens are dangerous up close!"
  
  "You were busy making the escape," Dor said. Now the abrasions on his arms and legs were stinging.
  
  "Get the rest of this clothing off!" she said, working at it herself. "Grundy, go find some healing elixir; we forgot to bring any, but a number of plants manufacture it."
  
  Grundy went into the forest. "Any of you plants have healing juice?" he called.
  
  Dor was now too tired to resist. Irene tugged at his trousers. Then she paused. "Oh, my—I forgot about that," she said.
  
  "What?" Dor asked, not sure how embarrassed he should be.
  
  "I'm certainly glad you brought that along!" she said. "Hey, Chet—look at this!"
  
  The centaur came over and looked. "The salve!" he said. "Yes, that could be quite useful."
  
  Dor relaxed. For a moment he had thought—but of course she had been talking about the salve.
  
  Soon Irene had him stripped. "Your skin's abraded all over!" she scolded. "It's a wonder you didn't faint down there!"
  
  "Guess I'll do it now," Dor said, and did.