by Jeff Grubb
"You don't understand," said Groag, his voice lightening. "She's all blue and beautiful."
She? Blue? thought Toede. Suddenly he recalled his vision. "Groag, it's a trap!" he shouted. "Some sort of magic! Don't look at her! Don't listen!"
He paused for a reply. All he heard was Groag saying, "Me? Chosen by destiny, really?"
"Abyss-fire, Groag," bellowed Toede. "Get out of there! Throw the rope down. Do something!"
"I never thought…" said Groag. "Me, Lord of Flotsam?"
"Groag!" screamed Toede. 'Throw the rope down!"
There was the sound of something falling, and a loud splash echoed about four feet from Toede's position. The hobgoblin waded to where it floated and picked up one end of the line.
And then the other end of the line.
"Groag!" shouted Toede.
"Yes, I suppose we should be going," said Groag to his beautiful blue vision. "Good-bye, Toede. Wish we could stay and chat, but I've got things to do. I know that, now."
Groag gave an off-key whistle that faded into the darkness, ending only with the sound of a busy shovel and then a few rushes of dirt. The gray spot where the hole had been became solid black as the main entrance was resealed.
Toede stood in the darkness, holding both ends of the rope. Despair rose in his heart, only to be shoved aside by another emotion.
Anger.
Anger at Groag, at Hopsloth, at the dark gods, at Charka and the gnolls, and at anyone else who crossed his path. He had believed. Nobility had played him for the sap. And now he was paying the price.
"That's fine then," he muttered. "No more 'live nobly' for you, Master Toede. See if I help out again."
And then Toede heard the waterfall start up once more.
Chapter 18
In which Our Protagonist finds someone who has been worse off than him for a lot longer, forms a fiendish alliance, and makes a breakthrough.
Toede headed south in the darkness, toward the sound of rushing water. One part of his mind was still reeling from Groag's abandonment. One part was concerned that some evil undead creature would at any moment leap out and attack him. One part was planning various forms of tortuous revenge against Groag, who had overtaken Hopsloth on Toede's list of individuals most-likely-to-be-found-someday-soon-as-the-mystery-filling-of-a-meat-pie.
And one part was very curious about how a waterfall could turn itself on and off. Particularly since the passage rose slightly as he moved south, toward firm and (relatively) dry ground.
The most logical supposition was that the waterfall was the result of some ancient device, still in operation after all this time, that had allowed water to fill to a certain point, then tipped and emptied. That indicated the possibility of an access hatch, or even a lower exit, perhaps at the base of the plateau.
Also to be considered a dread possibility was the fact that there was something (or several somethings) alive down here after all this time, and that the waterfall was a result of its (their) actions, perhaps as a transportation device, like locks or canals.
Least logical but most likely was that the waterfall would turn out to be something that Toede had never seen before. The idea that it was something novel kept one of the parts of Toede's mind occupied while the other parts were sulking, worrying, or plotting foul revenge.
Actually, the cause of the waterfall sound proved to be all three. The passageway opened and spilled into a large, dimly lit, dome-shaped room. The interior of the dome had been tiled in silver and blue, but many of the individual tiles had fallen away. The room was lit by a large pale stone overhead. Once it had undoubtedly shone with the full radiance of Bunniswot's light-stone, but over time diminished to no more than a dull amber luster.
The room was circular, its curved wall broken by what Toede assumed were reliefs and more of the odd statuary he had observed above-ground. The floor was also bowl-shaped, mimicking the ceiling, and filled with soft, black mud.
In the center of that mud was Bunniswot's fiend, the creature the pair had seen carved into the interior wall of the temple above. It was mounted not on one but two rollers, the front held in place by what would otherwise be the creature's arms, the rear by its legs. Its head overhung the front roller and consisted of a wolflike muzzle with its lower jaw removed. Its eyes were hexagonal orbs cut from garnet or some other blood-colored stone.
The fiend was about twenty feet long with the front roller fifteen feet end-to-end. It was bright red against the darker mud, and shone with the rich luster of newly cast iron. It was spinning both rollers frantically but making no forward progress in the thick mire. Instead, it was rotating counterclockwise slowly, spraying a new layer of mud on the statues.
The sound of that spray was what Toede had mistaken for a waterfall.
His path entered slightly above the level of the mud, which had a staircase leading down into it. Everything below the top step was covered with a crust. Toede scanned the room. There could be a hundred and forty doors in here, but if so, they were hidden beneath the grime.
He turned to leave.
"Yo! You alive?" came a deep voice behind him.
Toede winced at the deepness of the voice. The part of his mind that was wondering about the waterfall earlier now was wondering how fast he could check out the other end of the tunnel. The other parts of Toede's brain, those that had fallen into squabbling over whether Hop-sloth or Groag was more deserving of defenestration, was made aware that something unpleasant was happening out in the real world.
"Pard-" His voice cracked. "Pardon?"
"You alive?" repeated the creature. Toede realized it had a mouth of sorts, situated under the overhang of the jaw, above the main roller. "Ya know, like breathing?"
"Yes, I'm alive," said Toede.
He meant to add, "Are you?" but the answer set the creature off. With a mighty roar it spun its rollers faster and more furiously, with the result that it rotated faster in the dome. Toede stepped back into the passage as the rooster-tail of grime swept past.
The creature stopped its struggling and drifted to a stop, almost facing Toede.
"Damnation," said the native of the Abyss. "Damnation and crudbunnies."
Crudbunnies? thought Toede, but instead he asked, "What was that all about?"
"Sorry, natural reaction," said the metal beast. "You're alive, and the first thing I always do when confronted with the living is try to run them down."
"Must make you real popular at formal dances," said Toede, in a tone drier than anything else in the place.
The fiend regarded Toede for a long moment, then let out a low, appreciative whistle. "I'd heard that you ogres had taken a fall," it said. "I just wasn't aware you guys fell so hard!"
"I'm not an ogre," said Toede, crossing his arms. "Don't tell me you're a human. Even they don't get that ugly."
"Hobgoblin," said Toede, defensively. "Never heard of 'em," said the fiend. "Must be new. Lot of new stuff going around. I'm a juggernaut. You can call me Jug or Jugger if you want."
"Is that a real name?" asked Toede. "As real as most folk can make it," replied the creature. "The real name is Crystityckol'k'kq'q." The clash of consonants grated on Toede's ears. The juggernaut's name sounded like a wheelbarrow of crowbars going down some stairs.
"Stick with Jugger," said the Abyss-spawned abomination. "The old guys, the real pros, they have names that would shatter glass at fifty paces. That was in the old days before the Abyss was overrun with wanna-bes. Cute little fiends with user-friendly names: Castlebaum, Bloodrip-per, Muranitlar, and that new kid, Judith. What kind of names are those, I would ask, and they would say, 'Ones that can be pronounced-nobody wants to deal with a fiend whose name they can't pronounce.' Smug little varmints."
"Excuse me for interrupting," said Toede, "but I take it this is your temple?"
Toede felt as if the creature's eyes had gone misty and then suddenly refocused on him. "Temple?" it shouted. "This is my tomb!" And began laughing.
Toede felt the vi
brations beneath him and had to wait three minutes until the laughter of the fiend called Jugger subsided.
"Whew," said the creature. "That felt good. I haven't laughed like that in an elf's age. Is this my temple! Ha ha!"
Toede stepped in before Jugger set off on another round of mirth and memories. "You are the creature from the legends? The one the ogres, the original ogres, defeated?"
"Trapped, but not defeated!" boomed Jugger. "I'm still here, waiting to make my quota." It paused for a moment, then added, "Six hundred fifty-one."
"Okay," said Toede, with the caution one usually uses to approach such conversational booby traps. "Why six-fifty-one?"
"That's how many I've gotten so far!" said the juggernaut, beaming in pride. "My quota's an even thousand. Can't go back without my quota. You'da been six-fifty-two if I could just get loose. Then three-forty-eight more after that."
"So you can't get loose?" said Toede.
"Mired to the axles," grumbled the creature. "Can't get any traction worth a squat."
"Well," said Toede, thinking of how to turn the conversation toward the prospect of his own escape, "they did a good job on the temple. Built it up, decorated it, then buried it."
"By the five-headed bitch-dragon, little living buddy, they couldn't help themselves," said the juggernaut. "They were ogres. Everything they did was beautiful and fancy. They didn't even have ugly garbage. That's one reason I was called in." Another chuckle, as it added, "I got six hundred and fifty of them, you know, before they pinned me like this."
Toede was scanning the perimeter of the room for the barest hint of another opening. The juggernaut put in, "You'd better abandon all hope at finding another exit. There ain't one. The passage behind you leads up to a solid stone plug. And there ain't nothin' else lives down here, not even little blind cave fish. Unless you bore yourself a new opening, you're stuck. It's just the two of us."
"Just wonderful," said Toede, sitting down on the top muddy step and setting the rope and food satchel down next to him. "I take it you think I should just wade in and sacrifice myself to you, since I can't get out."
"Save you some time and trouble, little breathing pal," said the juggernaut. "I mean, I like the company as much as the next denizen of the Dark Lady's pit, and I want to know whaf s going on topside, but more than anything, I want my six-fifty-two."
Toede sat on the step, looking pensive.
"I mean, starvation is an ugly, ugly thing. You get so you're just begging for death." Jugger sighed. "Whereas, I'm quick! You'll never feel it. Death is like that, you know."
"I know," said Toede. "I've died before." He toyed with the idea of throwing himself under the juggernaut's roller, and maybe returning somewhere else in his third life. But with my luck I'd come right back here, he thought, three hundred and forty-eight more times.
"You died before?" asked the juggernaut with curiosity.
"Couple of times, so far," replied Toede. "And you're right, while there's a lot of pain leading up to it, the exact crossing over into death is a relatively painless thing."
The juggernaut let out a low whistle that sounded much the way steam escaping from a kettle would, if the kettle were the size of a hay wain. "Boy, I don't know. If you kill someone who has already died before, does that mess up the bookkeeping? I don't know if I can count you or not." The fiend was silent for a while.
"You've been down here since before the ogres were… ogres?" asked Toede.
"Yep," responded Jugger. "I was real peeved the first couple hundred years after they lured me into this pit. First I think, Okay, I'll sink to the bottom and slowly wheel my way out, but the mud's just thick and heavy enough to keep me afloat. So, then I think, Okay, I can empty the mud by splashing it around a lot. So I do that for a couple hundred years. The mud gets nice and thick around the edges, and then dries up and falls right back in, so guess what? I'm still hosed."
"You've tried waiting for the mud to dry out?" asked Toede.
"For a thousand years or so," answered Jugger. "A cou-pla times, actually. First I waited a century, not moving, until a thin crust formed on the mud. Then I shifted into low, and it all broke up. Then I waited two centuries, then three, and each time it broke up as soon as I set the wheels spinning. So I waited a real long time, and then the bump came along and knocked everything back to the muddy state."
'The bump?" said Toede.
"Bump," repeated the juggernaut. "Just one, but it was a loop of one. Gave the whole room a shake, and all the crust just caved in. That's when the other feller was here."
"Other fellow," said Toede dully.
"Some human spellcaster from Istar," said the juggernaut. "Seems the gods got PO'd at Istar and dropped a mountain on the place. He teleported out randomly and ended up here. Thaf s how come I know your modern language, and also how I learned that starvation is such a horrible way to kill yourself."
"He was number six-fifty-one," surmised Toede.
"Right, and ever since then, I've gone back to spinning my wheels, hoping to generate enough heat and traction to get out."
"So you've been running your rollers for over three hundred fifty years?"
"I guess," said the juggernaut, adding defensively, "I don't get out much, you know."
Toede was silent, weighing his options. He had rescued Charka out of his own hunger, and lived to regret it. If he helped Jugger, then he would surely die, and over three hundred others with him.
But if among those three hundred were Groag, Charka, or Hopsloth…
"I'm going to help you," said Toede.
"Wha' the?" said the juggernaut.
"I'm going to get you out of there," said Toede. "I can't get out on my own, and neither can you." He picked up the rope and walked to one side of the passage, where he chose something that might have been a statue and started pounding on the mud. It flaked away in thick clumps to reveal what looked like an egg rendered in pale brown stone. Toede tied one end of the rope around it.
"I should tell ya, little live one," said Jugger, "that if you wade in here and get close, I may just try and run you down. It's what I'm supposed to do. Can't help it."
"I'll take that chance," said Toede, taking the trailing end of the rope. He tested the muddy steps with a toe. Slippery but solid enough. He started to wade in.
"Three things should stop you from grinding me into the mud," Toede continued, slowly moving down into the mire. It supported his weight easily, as he guessed it would. After all, it supported an Abyss-spawned killing machine made of cast iron.
"First, if I die, you get one kill, whereas if you escape you can make your quota and go back to where you belong. Second, figure it out. If you get one visitor every three hundred fifty years, it'll be over a hundred thousand years before you see the Abyss again."
"One hundred and eighteen thousand years and three centuries," noted the juggernaut, and Toede could hear the faintest touch of wistfulness in its voice.
"Right. And third, you don't know if I count for your tally or not."
The hobgoblin was swimming through the mire at this point, dragging the rope behind him and moving to the side of the great crimson monster, near the front roller.
Once a whale had washed up on the beach near Flotsam, and Toede and a delegation of merchants went down to investigate it. It was a huge, black monster and towered over them, stinking in the sun. The gulls pecked at it, and it smelled horrible, and at length Toede had dispatched a crew of prisoners to bury it then and there. Something that large made Toede feel extremely vulnerable and small.
Touching the huge front roller, still smooth and shiny after millennia, made him feel the same way.
"I'm going to dive down," he told the juggernaut, "and slip the rope under one end of your roller. Don't move."
Toede took a deep breath and submerged in the mire, feeling his way alongside the creature. The mud grew thicker and harder to move through as he plunged downward, but at last he touched the underside of the roller. He shoved the
line underneath it and ran it up the interior curve of the creature's body.
The juggernaut remained inert, but Toede could feel a vibration that seemed to rise in intensity as he worked.
Finally, he surfaced, sputtering mud and wiping the thick grime from his eyes.
"What now?" asked Jugger, and Toede detected a sense of impatience in its voice.
"I'm getting on board," said Toede. He took the leading edge of the line that ran under the front roller, in his teeth, and climbed up the side of the creature. As he climbed, the mud slid off him in clumps. Toede looped the rope beneath the rocker arm holding the front roller, and now stood directly above the creature's face.
"Okay, give me a little power," said Toede.
He almost hurtled from his perch as the juggernaut lunged forward, but managed to grab hold of a cast iron eyebrow. Even so, he fell flat on his face and could taste blood.
"Enough!" he bellowed almost immediately. Jugger subsided.
The rope was looped around the front roller for two revolutions. Toede grabbed the leading end and pulled it to the back, dropping it in front of the rear roller. In the process, he noted a human skull jammed between the body and the roller cavity. Six-fifty-one, no doubt.
"Again!" shouted Toede, then immediately, "Stop!" Jugger's drive gave him about ten more yards of slack. "I have to get down to do your rear wheels. Do you move in reverse?"
He slipped back into the warm mud and repeated the process on the rear roller, tying it off so that the line would gather on the roller like a spindle or a winch. Toede pulled himself, grimy and exhausted, to the top of the creature again.
"You done?" grunted the juggernaut, sounding like metal under strain, raring to go.
"Yes," said Toede, tugging on the lines to make sure they were taut. "Okay," he said, "I want you to start your rollers slowly."
Jugger let loose with a mighty bellow and threw both rollers into "high." The hobgoblin almost went tumbling backward off the beast as it leapt forward.
The line grew taut and held. The column that it was attached to did not, however. It began to bow severely, pulling away from the wall in a staccato of stone.