Ogre, Ogre (Xanth 5) Read Free Page B

because it was made of green cheese that didn't glow so well. Evidently, high-flying dragons had eaten most of it, for only a crescent remained, the merest rind. Still, it was impressive.
    The mare pounded on. Tandy's hands grew numb, but her hold was firm. Her body was bruised and chafed by the bouncing; she would be sore for days! But at least she was getting there. Her bad dream slipped into oblivion for a while, as dreams tended to, fading in and out as the run continued.
    Abruptly she woke. A dark castle loomed in the fading moonlight. They had arrived!
    Barely in time, too, for now dawn was looming behind them. The nightmare could not enter the light of day. In fact, the mare was already fading out, for regardless of dawn, it was no longer bound when Tandy left the dreamstate. The sleeping pills must have finished their nap, and Tandy had finished hers with them. No--the stones were mostly gone; they must have bounced out one at a time in the course of the rough ride, and now only one was left, not enough to do the job.
    In a moment the mare vanished entirely, freed by circumstance, and Tandy found herself sprawled on the ground, battered and wide-eyed.
    She was stiff and sore and tired. It had not been a restful sleep at all. Her legs felt swollen and numb from thigh to ankle. Her hair was plastered to her scalp with the cold sweat of nocturnal fear. It had been a horrendous ordeal. But at least she was in sight of her destination.
    She got painfully to her feet and staggered toward the edifice as the blinding sun hefted itself ambitiously above the trees. The land of Xanth brightened about her, and the creatures of day began to stir. Dew sparkled. It was all strangely pretty.
    But as she came to the moat and saw that there was the stirring of some awful creature within it, orienting on her, she had a horrible revelation. She knew what Castle Roogna looked like, from descriptions her father had made. He had told her wonderful stories about it, from the time she was a baby onward, about the orchard with its cherrybomb trees, bearing cherries a person dared not eat, and shoes of all types growing on shoe trees, and all manner of other wonders too exaggerated to be believed. Only an idiot or a hopeless visionary would believe in the land of Xanth , anyway! Yet she almost knew the individual monsters of the moat by name, and the same for the guardian zombies who rested in the graveyard, awaiting the day when Xanth needed defense. She knew the spires and turrets and all, and the ghosts who dwelt within them. She had a marvelously detailed mental map of Castle Roogna--and this present castle did not conform. This was the wrong castle.
    Oh, woe! Tandy stood in dull, defeated amazement. All her effort, her last vestige of strength and hope, and her deviously laid plans to reach her father lay in ruins. What was she to do now? She was lost in Xanth, without food or water, so tired she could hardly move, with no way to return home. What would her mother think?
    Something stirred within the castle. The drawbridge lowered, coming to rest across the small moat. A lovely woman walked out of the castle, subduing the reaching monster with a trifling gesture of her hand, her voluminous robe blowing in the morning breeze. She saw Tandy and came toward her--and Tandy ,saw with a new shock of horror that the woman had no face. Her hood contained a writhing mass of snakes, and emptiness where human features should have been. Surely the nightmare had saved the worst dream for last!
    "Dear child," the faceless woman said. "Come with me. We have been expecting you."
    Tandy stood frozen, unable even to muster the energy for a tantrum. What horrors lay within this dread castle? "It is all right," the snake-headed woman said reassuringly. "We consider that your phenomenal effort in catching and riding the nightmare constitutes sufficient challenge to reach this castle. You will not be subject to the usual riddles of admission."
    They were going