by Jeff Grubb
Toede picked up the shattered tiles. They were square, about a foot across and the thickness of a fingernail. The purple ones were lapis lazuli, sliced to a thinness that would make a dwarven craftsman salivate. The yellowish ones were beaten gold, sliced even thinner. Toede held one of the purple ones up against the doorway. The light reflected through its thinness, casting smokey purple shadows on his face.
The tilework stretched farther into the darkness. Bunniswot shouted and was rewarded with a crisp, clear echo.
So there was a solid wall on the far side, far out of reach.
The human and the hobgoblin exchanged glances as they started down the hallway.
The entranceway was lined with statues and inscriptions. The statues were humanoid and bilaterally symmetrical-that is, the left side of each blobby figure matched the right side. Some had definite heads or arms, but others seemed to be nothing more than fire or water caught at an opportune moment and transformed to stone.
"Are these your proto-ogres?" asked Toede.
"Yes and no," said Bunniswot. "I think their sculpture, aside from the carvings down in the camp, is supposed to represent the 'true form' of an individual. In the temple's prime, there would have been colorful pigments smeared.on the stones, or even magically illuminated ones." ' Toede grunted, wondering about the sanity of these creatures, if they truly were the ancestors of the ogres. He had heard worse tales, but he definitely did not want to meet the original models of some of the statuary-particularly the ones represented clutching spikes.
The hallway opened into a large room, its side walls falling away in the darkness on the right and left. The tile-work continued, ending in a great edifice carved into the living rock at the center of the hill. This carving was over thirty feet high and tilted forward at the top, so as to loom over those below.
There was no abstract nature to this carving. It was the leering head of a jackal or coyote, its eyes not circular, but hexagonal hollows that once held lights or flames. The jackal head only had an upper jaw, its ivory spears of teeth set into stone. What would have been the lower jaw was instead a wide horizontal roller, like that used for children's toys or a baker's rolling pin.
Both explorers stopped and looked up at the monstrosity. It towered over them so that the ceiling itself was lost to view.
At length, Bunniswot said, "The legends I told you about, the ones that brought us here?" His voice carried a thrill of wonderment.
"Uh-huh," said Toede, suddenly aware of a chill in the air.
"In those legends, the ur-ogres had fought an Abyss-spawned fiend, defeated it, and trapped it."
Toede thought of his own dream, of the ogres burying the temple. "You think this is commemorating the battle?"
"Uh-huh," said Bunniswot. "Or warning people that here is where the fiend is trapped."
Bunniswot, with the light, took two steps backward, just in case. Toede took two steps forward, to examine the carvings closer.
Several hundred years before, the timbers supporting portions of the floor had rotted away, such that little was holding up the panels of the ancient floor. Stone and gold made thinner than a sheaf of paper were now spanning deep pits and hidden underground passages.
Toede stepped onto one such location, where four unsupported tiles met. They cracked immediately beneath his modest weight.
The hobgoblin pitched forward, his arms pinwheeling to grab on to something concrete. He shouted what might have been a cry for help, a curse, or both.
The scholar shouted something back and stepped forward, but Toede was already gone. Bunniswot counted to three before he heard the impact, a loud splash. The sound echoed and rebounded off the walls, booming in the scholar's ears like a castle falling into the sea.
The booming diminished, until finally Bunniswot was left with the silence.
He dropped flat on the floor and crawled to the edge, testing every move before placing any weight on the fragile surface. He edged up to the rim of the void below.
"Hello?" he asked meekly, afraid there would be no reply.
Chapter 17
In which rescue is sent for, and once it arrives, Our Protagonist must argue in his defense from a decidedly inferior position, yet despite this almost succeeds. Almost.
The reply came, not in any words that Bunniswot would wish to repeat in mixed company. Mixed, in the terms of containing men and women, adults and children, or the living and dead.
The long colorful string of loud curses bounced off the walls of the upper temple.
"Are you in pain?" shouted the scholar when the verbal onslaught finally wound down.
"Yes," shouted Toede. "My feelings are hurt that I'm down here and you're up there." "What do you see?"
"Darkness and water," said Toede. "I'm in some kind of flooded hallway or aqueduct. It's neither deep nor swift." 'Thank goodness for the water," shouted Bunniswot. Another string of curses, followed by a pause. "Why do you say that?"
"You fell about fifty feet," replied Bunniswot, estimating by his count. "If you had hit something hard, you wouldn't be alive to be cursing now."
Toede refused to be comforted by this news. Above him, a bright light revealed Bunniswot's position. To the right and left everything faded into darkness.
"I can try this passage that heads toward the south," said Toede. "I think I hear rushing water in that direction."
"Not a good idea," said Bunniswot. "We had to dig our way in here, remember? It's unlikely that there's another exit. You notice any vermin? Any rats?"
The sound of someone turning around swiftly to look in all directions at once, while standing in water, then a quiet, concerned, "No."
"That's too bad," said Bunniswot with the manner of man who was not at the bottom of a watery hole. "If there were, that would mean I might be wrong-there is another way out."
"I'm out of options," said Toede crossly. "I'll go get help," said Bunniswot. "What an original idea. Throw down some food, will you? It may be a while before you get back."
"Right." Something shadowy splashed into the stream near the hobgoblin. Toede waded over to it and pulled it out. "Got it? You want the light?" Bunniswot shouted.
"You'll need it," said Toede, adding to himself, if there are any nasty creatures left, I'd rather Bunniswot's light attract them to him as opposed to me. "I'll find a dry niche and wait."
"Right-oh," said the scholar. "I hate to leave you like this."
Toede considered yet another string of curses, but instead said, "I'll be fine. I've hosted dinner parties in worse neighborhoods than this. Now go, before I catch the cobbiewobbles or something worse."
"Right-oh," Bunniswot repeated. Toede heard footsteps retreating in long strides. There was another shout about a minute later. Bunniswot, letting him know that he had reached the door unharmed, was indeed heading for help. Toede sloshed through the water and found an uncomfortable pile of damp, rotted timbers that had cascaded from the ceiling a few millennia earlier. He clambered up on them, shucked off his boots, emptied them of water, and unwrapped the package Bunniswot had tossed to him. Strips of cooked boar, still fresh from the previous evening. Toede chewed on the meat, reflecting on his situation.
His dream had been a sending, of that he was certain. An opportunity to further enhance his noble status by helping the young scholar.
And to enhance his own name and line his pockets with any ancient coins that were lying about.
Again, the idea of noble actions and self-advancement seemed to go hand in hand. He helped the scholars and got a gem and a fine meal. He discovered the lost temple of the proto-ogres, and was meant to find great treasure. It wasn't his dream's fault that the floorboards were weak, was it?
The noble heroes always followed their dreams. So Toede followed his, and now it left him seated on some moldering wood awash in fetid, lifeless water.
Of course, the dream didn't mention the big edifice above, the jackal-faced fiend with the rolling-pin lower jaw. Was that more than just an overs
ight?
Toede shuddered and cast a glance around. It looked as though nothing had passed this way, fiendish or otherwise, for the past five hundred years or so. So either the creature from the carving was very lackadaisical about its housecleaning habits, or the temple was empty.
Except for him.
Toede leaned back, staring into the darkness above him. He closed his eyes and listened, but heard nothing except for the rush of a distant waterfall. He was unaware of the passage of time and fell asleep without intending to. His dreams were monochromatic, unenlightening, and unremarkable. No shining women showed him the way out.
Then was the sound of boots on tiles above, and Toede bolted awake. The sound of rushing water in the distance had stopped, but Toede could discern the sounds of a careful, heavy tread, as if each footfall were being tested
and retested before proceeding.
There was no light from the hole far above, only the same murky grayness.
"Hello?" said Toede, his voice echoing in the darkness. Louder, he shouted, "Bunniswot? Anyone there?"
From above came a quiet, level voice. "Hello, Toede."
"Groag, is that you?" Toede could just make out the smaller hobgoblin's silhouette, black against darker black.
A pause, as if the shadow were thinking it over. "Yes," came the response.
"Did Bunniswot send you?" Toede said, growing concerned. It sounded like Groag, and looked (as far as he could tell) like Groag, and since Toede could not imagine much of a market for Groag-imitators, it must be Groag. But something was amiss here.
Another pause. "Yes," came the answer, "and Renders, before he left."
"Did you bring a rope?" said Toede.
'Typical," came the response. "Yes, I brought a rope."
"Well, nice of you to drop by and all, but do you think you could hurry up and get me out of here?"
Another pause, and when the answer came at last, it was all choked. "Why?"
"Well, because it's wet and cold and I'm in a temple dedicated to a creature who might not be entirely dead," said Toede.
Another pause. "And?"
"And I'm asking you nicely," said Toede, smiling in the dark. "Very nicely."
"Oh." Another pause. "That makes it all better, then, doesn't it?"
Toede frowned and said to the figure above, "I sense that something is wrong here."
"You might say that," said Groag's voice.
"Something in the temple?" His voice caught. Something ugly and fiendish and heading his way?
"No," said Groag's voice.
"Something at camp, then. With Bunniswot and the others?" Toede felt a chill creeping up his spine.
"Yes," said the voice from above.
"Groag," said Toede, "I really enjoy playing 'ask-me-another' with you. Just tell me what happened."
Another silence, and Toede was just about to launch into a string of invectives aimed at his hobgoblin partner, when Groag said in a strangled voice, "You happened, Toede."
"Pardon?"
"You happened." The voice grew stronger, sounding more like Groag every moment. The extremely irritated Groag Toede had left by the fireside the previous evening. "I survived your last little encounter among the living, just barely, and pulled my life back together. Yet every time you show up, everything falls apart again." It sounded as though he were on the verge of weeping.
"Groag, I did come back for you. Didn't I? It's not as if I were going to leave you among the gnolls." Toede tried to give his voice the consistency of buttermilk. If Groag cracked up, he'd never get out of here.
"You came back," came the accusation, "to make matters worse."
"Worse?" shouted Toede. "I foxed Charka into helping us. I got hot food in everyone's bellies. I found this old temple for Bunniswot, and you say I've made matters worse. How?"
A very long silence this time. "By being you. Just by being Toede."
Toede waited for Groag to pick up the thread and explain himself, and after half an eternity the hobgoblin did. "You left Renders and the rest of us behind when you went off haring with Bunniswot. While you were gone, Renders told more stories about the Heroes of the Lance. He also told the story of your death. The first one, with the kender and the dragon."
Again silence, another eternity. Then Groag picked up the story again. "Renders told about the kender and the dragon and your disastrous hunt. And Charka said that Renders was talking about you, King of Little Dry Frogs." Groag chuckled, not a pleasant sound.
"Listen, Groag," said Toede, "Whatever Charka says…"
"Don't interrupt," said Groag, loudly and surprisingly sharply. "Renders said that Charka had to be mistaken. He said it in a way that made Charka feel stupid about it. Charka argued, and soon the two were going at it heatedly. You've seen Charka's style of argument."
A sinking feeling gripped Toede in the stomach and would not let go.
"Then Bunniswot arrived with news of your discovery…" said Groag.
The sinking feeling became sunken. "Charka was angered that you two had gone into the necromancer's territory. Renders said that Charka had mistaken you for Toede. Bunniswot launched into a loud tirade about how misunderstood Toede had been and anyway no hairy dog-man was going to tell him and you where to go. And then…"
"Charka hit Bunniswot?" Toede suggested. There was a sigh above. "Square in the face. Bunniswot hit the ground like a sack of dung." Then sobbing. Toede was surprised, as he did not think that Groag and the scholar were that close.
When Groag continued, his voice had regained its steely tone. "So Bunniswot was lying on the ground, bleeding from the nose and mouth, and Renders got angry and pushed Charka. And Charka pushed back, and Renders fell over backward.
"Then Charka stopped, and realized what he had done-pushing a powerful wizard around. Remember, you told him Renders was this great, flesh-boiling wizard? Except the wizard didn't react as a wizard would, throwing fireballs, with lightning dancing off his beard.
He reacted like an old man who'd been pushed down."
Toede finished the thought. "And Charka realized he'd been fooled…"
Groag continued, and Toede imagined him now sitting at the edge of the hole, staring into the darkness. "Charka ordered the gnolls who were still in camp to go out and gather the ones who had gone hunting. Renders went after them, to 'set things right' in his words."
"Charka will decorate a stick with his head," said Toede to himself.
"Yes," said Groag, and Toede was surprised he had heard him. "And then he will return and beat the rest of the scholars to death with it. Bunniswot was in no shape to travel, so he gave me the rope and told me how to find you." A pause. "When I last saw him he was digging up his papers. Said he was going to throw them on the fire. His shirt was drenched in his own blood."
Groag's voice had become softer as his tale wound down. "They're all going to die, you know, and it's all your fault," he said at last.
Toede frowned in the darkness. "Now wait a moment, that can't be right. I wasn't even there!"
"Exactly!" shouted Groag. "You weren't there! You were out getting in trouble elsewhere! Were you there, you would have come up with some glib lie and forced it down their gullible throats, and they would have thanked you for it, and they would keep believing you until you betrayed them sometime later on."
"Groag, I…"
"You're always abandoning people, either leaving them to fend for themselves-or dying-and you don't even have the decency to stay dead!" Groag was bellowing now, and with all the echoes and reverberation Toede had a hard time making out his words. "It's not a question of if you will betray someone. It's a question of when!"
Groag was bubbling with rage. "You think this new nobility scam will bring you back into power, but I won't
let anyone else die because of your venal stupidity!"
Groag said a few other things that were lost in the echoes. His tirade ran out of gas finally. All Toede could hear was heavy breathing. "Finished?" asked Toede. "I supp
ose I am," said Groag in the darkness. "Then throw the rope down," said Toede. A long pause, broken only by gurgling noises. "Have you heard even one word I've said?"
"I've heard every word you said, and they're well-said words." Toede took a deep breath, feeling his tongue physically rebel at the next words. "I want you to know… I'm sorry. I was"-he felt his stomach coil-"wrong. I was wrong."
There was no response from Groag, so Toede pressed on. "I've been wrong in the past. I'll admit it. So full of myself and sure of everything that I led you into disaster, and paid for it with my life. Twice now. I'm sorry. I was wrong. Now throw the rope down."
A silence continued at the top. Toede was reminded of his nonconversation with a horse the day before. That at least had a resolution.
"You mention the scholars," continued Toede, shifting tone slightly. "We both know that the only thing that can save them is me. Only I am smart enough, and cagey enough, and yes, greedy and venal enough to pull it off. Only I can deal with Charka and the gnolls. Otherwise they'll die, Groag, unless you toss down the rope." "I… I…" Then silence.
Toede wished he could command, could yell, could scream Groag into obedience. No, this was the only way.
Toede took another deep breath, and the next lie came more freely. "I wish I were more like you, sometimes. A-dap-tive. I want to make things better now. For you and for me. Throw the rope down, Groag," said Toede, the tiniest bit of steel creeping into his voice.
"I suppose you're right," said the small voice at the top.
"It's just been so confusing-you, the kender, the humans. I mean, who knows what's right anymore?"
"I understand," said Toede carefully. "Just throw the rope down."
"Oh," said the voice above.
Toede missed the 'kay' that should have followed it. After a moment, he ventured, "Groag?"
Groag's voice was now a whisper, "There's someone here."
Toede felt the return of a glacial fear. "Get out of there, Groag! Come back for me later. Can you hear me? Get out of there." Images of some Abyss-spawned fiend bearing down on his former courtier (rescuing rope in hand) coursed through his hobgoblin mind.
