"You never asked for it," said Toede absentmindedly, looking into the temple's new entrance. "But that's all right-you've been busy."

While it was true that hobgoblins such as Toede did not particularly need light to see, the presence of light did help him discern colors, and now revealed to him a checkerboard of purple and bright yellow stretching out into the darkness.

"Guess we better go in," said Toede.

"After you," said Bunniswot. "You are smaller than I."

"The history should say that Sir Bunniswot was the first to enter the greatest temple discovery since the War of the Lance," said Toede. "Please, I'm feeling noble about it," he added for anyone or anything that might be listening.

The scholar could not dispute that last point, and so, taking the light-stone, he poked his head through the small opening and slowly wormed his body through the doorway. When there were no immediate screams of pain or sounds of flying axe blades whirring through the air, Toede tossed in the large shovel and followed.

Bunniswot had not wandered too far from the door, and indeed was inspecting the frame and tiles that the falling iron door had smashed.

"You were right," he said, the scholarly part of his mind running at full tilt. "This door should have opened outward. The pins had rusted almost clear through, and that push knocked it off its hinges."

The air was thick with humidity, and in the darkness Toede could hear the distant sound of water dripping. Seepage from farther up the hill, or perhaps some natural spring.

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.