"Have you the fpell?"

"We have."

"Ekfellent. I have mated, and muft foon make my neft."

"The way we have set it up," Esk explained, "is that you will select a site near the center of the Vale. Then, before the larvae hatch and swarm, you and all other vulnerable creatures will evacuate the Vale, and we'll lay down the containment spell, which is really an aspect of the Void, and leave it in place until the swarm is done. Then we'll fold up the Void again, and the voles will return to restore the river. The demon's dikes will be hopelessly ruined, of course, so the restoration will be easy."

Wilda considered. "I have two queftionf," she said, wiggling her nose delicately. "Are you fure the demonf will leave?"

"Well, we think they will, because they won't enjoy the swarming at all, and once their dikes are ruined they'll have to do the work all over again, and demons are not noted for their patience. If it doesn't work, we'll just have to think of something else."

"And who will fet out the Void, and fetch it back again?"

"Why, Marrow will do that," Esk said. "You haven't met Marrow yet; he's a-" He broke off.

"Oops," Chex said.

"Oh, my!" Latia said. "We forgot that we needed him for that little ch.o.r.e!"

"Do you folk have a problem?" Metria inquired, coalescing.

"You've been listening!" Esk said accusingly.

"Of course," she said. "I'm the demon liaison, after all. Your bra.s.sy girlfriend appointed me."

"That's bra.s.sie!" Esk snapped. "Not bra.s.sy."

"I don't think you're going to find your bone friend in time," the demoness said, "or your metal one. Considering that we hold both hostage."

"What?" Esk gasped.

"Well, I really don't expect you to believe me, but it's true. We couldn't let you folk proceed with your plan unchallenged, after all. You can have them back the moment you agree to stop hara.s.sing us and go home."

"d.a.m.n you!" Esk swore.

"That's hard to do, just as it's hard to kill your dead friends. All we can do is hold them. Are you ready to deal?"

"No!" Esk cried in fury and anguish. "I'll handle that Void myself!"

"Esk, you'll be holed!" Chex protested. "You wouldn't survive!"

"I'm an old crone; I'll do it," Latia said. "It doesn't matter much if I die."

"I'll never understand you mortals' will to sacrifice," Metria said. "It won't work, regardless, because whoever remains in the Vale will be holed and killed, and won't be able to remove the Void anyway."

They exchanged glances. "She's right," Chex said. "A fleshly creature can't do it."

"But a demonic creature might," Metria said. "Why don't you ask me?"

"What?"

"I said-"

"I know what you said. Even if a demon could handle the Void, which no demon can, why would you? This is to drive you out of the Vale!"

"I can't touch the Void, 'tis true. But I could protect a mortal from the swarm, by making myself into an invisible shield."

"You know, she could," Chex said. "But-"

"But why? I'll tell you why," Metria said. "It's because we demons have nothing to fear from the wiggles. We can either vaporize or make ourselves too hard for them to penetrate. We just don't like the mess they will make of our dikes. But you mortals won't believe that, so we'll have to prove it the hard way. Are you ready to deal?"

"Deal?" Esk asked. He was getting bewildered, as he tended to do when events became too surprising.

"I'll help you with the Void," Metria said. "And we will release our hostages to you. If."

"If what?" Esk asked guardedly.

"If, after you are satisfied that you can't drive us from the Vale, you will put the same effort into solving our problem that you have put into trying to get rid of us."

"Us help you?" Esk demanded. "That would be crazy!"

"Suit yourself," she said, beginning to fade.

"Wait!" he cried. "I didn't say I wouldn't!"

She resolidified. "Now you are getting sensible. It isn't much we ask, after all."

"Let me see whether I understand this correctly," Chex said. "You are allowing us one more try at getting you demons out of the Vale of the Vole, and if we fail, then we must try as hard to get rid of the hummers as we did to get rid of you."

"That's it," Metria agreed.

"But if we fail to get rid of you, we may fail to get rid of the hummers, too!"

"But you'll try as hard as you can, and you might have better success," the demoness said. "You fleshly creatures have souls, and therefore a degree of honor; we think it's worth the deal."

"And we get Bria and Marrow back," Esk said.

"The moment you start working for us," Metria agreed.

"All right," Esk said. "I'll make the deal."

"Now wait," Chex protested. "This isn't tight. If we do drive the demons out, we won't get back the hostages, and-"

"Never mind," Esk said. "I have my reason. I'm making the deal, not you." He turned to the demoness. "I will handle the Void; you will protect me."

"But vhe may not!" Volney said. "How can you truvt her with your life?"

"Because I'm making the deal," Esk said, "It's my responsibility. If I die, then the deal is off, and the rest of you can do what you want. So the demoness has some incentive to honor her part of it, and keep me alive."

Metria nodded. "You have gotten smarter, mortal."

"But then the hostages would not be freed," Chex said.

"I'm the one who is love with Bria, not you," Esk said. "If I'm gone, there's no such lever on you. And the demons don't want the hostages anyway; they're just using them against us. So if I don't make it, you just quit and go home, because the Vale will be locked forever in the Void, and of no further use to either the voles or the demons. We're playing for double or nothing, here; if Metria lets me die, the demons lose as much as we or the voles do. More, actually, because the demons already control the Vale, and the voles will be driven away if the demons remain."

"You've learned to play hardball," Chex said. The term derived from Mundania, wherein the ball might be soft, but the play bashed heads. Ogres were fans of Mundane ball games, as they were of Mundane politics, because of the extreme violence there.

"It will take me a day to build my neft, and another to lay my eggf," Wilda said. "Can the volef evacuate in that time?"

"They'll have to," Volney said. "Let'v get on it."

They got on it. They helped organize the evacuation of the voles from the Vale, while Wilda built her nest in the center beside the deleted Kill-Mee River. The voles emerged from their deep tunnels in families, with cute little ones scrambling along behind their elders. All of them changed from their subterranean outfits to their surface coats, whose gray color resisted the brightness and heat of the sunlight better.

The demons watched cynically. They didn't care whether the voles left or stayed; they intended to govern the Vale their way regardless. Similarly they watched Wilda at her labor fashioning her nest. She gathered sticks and stones and broken bones, and sand and mud and other crud, and formed a small round house, c.h.i.n.king every crevice tight. Then she climbed into that house and pulled the lid down securely.

The voles were only half evacuated then, but that was on schedule, because they had one more day. They toiled on out, all day and all night, until the Vale was entirely clear. The demons remained where they were, unconcerned.

Esk took the wadded-up Void, which Chex had saved in her pack, and carried it to a spot near the nest. "Where are you, Metria?" he called.

The demoness materialized beside him. "Here I am, mortal. What's on your foolhardy mind?"

"It's almost time. I just want you to be here with me when I open the Void."

"I will be as close to you as a second skin," she a.s.sured him with, it seemed, a certain relish.

The lid lifted off the nest. Wilda's head poked out. "I have an hour to get clear," she said, spying Esk. "If everything ready? No volef remain?"

"It's ready," Esk said.

Wilda scrambled out of the nest, let the lid fall back into place, and hurried toward the forest. She knew that the wiggle larvae had no discrimination; they would hole her as readily as anything else in their path.

Just as she plunged into the forest, Esk heard a noise from the nest. The larvae were starting to hatch!

He took out the Void and unfolded it. He laid it out on the ground and stepped away from the black hole that appeared. It might be merely an aspect of the Void annex of the gourd, but it looked deep, and he didn't want to fall in.

The sounds were increasing at the nest. "Time to shield me," he told Metria.

"That I will do, mortal man," she agreed. She wavered, and became a flat sheet. This sheet floated toward him, becoming translucent, then transparent. It brushed up against him, and pa.s.sed through his clothing, plastering itself to his body.

"Hey!" he protested as it pressed against his face, threatening to smother him. "I have to breathe, you know!"

"So you do, mortal," she said. "I forgot." A wrinkle formed, so that the fit against his face was not quite tight, and air could get in from the sides.

The wiggles were definitely swarming now. Holes were appearing in the nest, and their zapping spread out in all directions.

"How could you pa.s.s through my clothing, but still stop wiggles?" he asked nervously.

"I phased out and in again," the sheet replied. It continued to close about his torso, wrapping about his arms and legs. She had not been joking about being as close to him as a second skin!

"Hey!" he exclaimed, as the sheet abruptly tickled him in the crotch. It was conforming itself precisely to his private parts. "Stop that!"

"Make me, mortal!" the sheet replied, giving him an embarra.s.sing squeeze.

Esk jumped, turned, and started to stride away. "Don't turn!" the sheet cried.

Zzappt "Ouch!" He clapped his hand to a b.u.t.tock.

"I told you not to turn," the sheet said. "I am covering you only on the front. You got tagged by a wiggle."

Indeed, there was blood on his hand where he had touched his b.u.t.tock. A pa.s.sing wiggle larva had grazed him. He hastily turned to face the nest again-and felt something bounce off his chest.

"Just in time," the sheet said. "If that had struck your back, it would have holed you."

Now the zaps of the wiggle larvae were all around him, pa.s.sing so thickly that there was no way to avoid them. Metria was indeed protecting him. He just wished that she wasn't so conscientious about certain regions of his anatomy.

"I never promised you I wouldn't enjoy it," the sheet said, giving him yet another embarra.s.sing tickle. Yet at the same time a zap bounced off there, so he knew that this closeness was necessary. She was teasing him, but also doing the job she had promised. She evidently did have a certain interest in his body, though he couldn't see why; if she wanted a body, why didn't she have a male demon a.s.sume that shape?

The carnage of the wiggle swarm was becoming horrendous. The shrubs and trees were getting holed and tattered as the tiny wormlike creatures zaped through. Each wiggle larva would jump forward a short distance, then hover in place in the air, absolutely still. It was evidently tasting its surroundings to discover whether they matched its need. Then, unpredictably, it would jump forward again. If anything was in its path, it simply tunneled magically through. That was why wiggles were considered the worst scourge of Xanth; a swarm ruined just about everything in the vicinity.

Except the demons. The demons were ignoring the larvae, or at least were not alarmed by them. A demon in the vapor state could not be hurt by holing, and they were achieving such compactness when solid that the wiggles bounced off, as they did from Esk. Metria was right: this was no way to drive out the demons.

However, if anything happened to Esk, all the demons would be trapped in the Void, for they could not escape it. They weren't in any discomfort within it, they simply could not pa.s.s its outer rim, which was near the edge of the Vale. That would be one way to rid the Vale of them!

The only trouble was that it would rid the Vale of serviceability for anything else; any voles who entered the Void would not be able to depart again, ever.

No, wait! He had miscalculated. Once the wiggle swarm was gone, anyone, human or vole, could enter, fold up the central hole, and abolish the Void. Why hadn't he thought of that before? He had never had to risk his life here!

But the demoness hadn't realized it either, or Chex, so at least he had company in his foolishness. That was a comfort. Anyway, someone would have had to risk his life, in order to place the Void, and that person would have been stuck in it with the wiggles, and he, Esk, was the only one Metria would have been willing to protect, so it all came out the same.

The hours pa.s.sed as the carnage proceeded. The zaps of the wiggles became fewer, here, as their radius of destruction increased, but Esk knew better than to take a chance; one holing by one tardy larva could still put him away. That meant that he remained in close-very close!- contact with Metria. After a long while she tired of nudging and tickling him in intimate regions, having evidently had as much fun as she wanted with him, but they were still stuck with each other's company.

"Why, really, did you make this deal?" he asked her.

"To get this close to you without your saying no, of course," the sheet responded promptly. "How else could I surround your flesh with mine for hours at a stretch?" She squeezed him in a localized region, making her meaning considerably clearer than he liked.

"I don't think so," he retorted. "Your sole object has been to embarra.s.s me or subvert me so that I could not be an effective leader against the demons. Now that we're cooperating, there cannot be much pleasure for you in my company. You had to know you were letting yourself in for a long, dull day. So why did you do it?"

"You are getting smart again," she said. "I suppose there is no reason not to tell you the truth, now. We really do want to be rid of the hummers; they are just about as bad to us as the wiggle swarm is to you. Every time we try to settle down in solid state to rest, they drive us crazy with their humming. We have tried everything we can think of to get rid of them, but they just keep getting worse. When we saw how determined and clever you were getting in trying to deal with us, it just seemed that you might even solve our problem with the hummers if you had reason. That is the truth. We're desperate, and we want your help. Without it, we're going to have to vacate the Vale anyway."

"You mean if we had just done nothing, you demons would have gone, and the voles' problem would have been solved?" Esk asked, chagrined.

"It is an irony, isn't it," she agreed complacently.

"You don't know how that makes me feel!"

"Oh, I know," she said. "Even if you can't solve our problem, I will have some delight in remembering how much frustration I caused you simply by telling you the truth."

Esk laughed somewhat bitterly. "You outsmarted me, all right! Yet if I had it to do over again, I probably would, because-"