"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
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."