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 vibrations 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.