"Nine-nine-seven" came a powerful bellow that Toede felt more than heard, and he swiveled his head to see Jug-ger charging up the stairs. One last foolish mage was aiming a wand at the juggernaut, and was rewarded with a shriek and the solemn declaration, "Nine-nine-eight!"

Toede saw what was going to happen and closed his eyes. Hopsloth realized a moment later. His eyes grew wide and wild, exactly like those of a frog's caught in a sudden flash of light.

Jugger struck Toede and Hopsloth, and all three pitched off the balcony, over the pool. The far wall shattered like a dry crust of sugar, and Hopsloth's body was left twitching on the remaining spurs of stone.

"Nine-nine-nine!" bellowed Jugger. "And a thousand!"

Jugger and Toede's remains flew over the deep red waters. Jugger began to fade, and only Toede's body reached the hungry jaws of the sharks circling below.

Interlude

We return again to the Abyss, surrounded by the spirits of the damned, for analysis, color commentary, and accusations.

"Well, it was entertaining," said the Abbot of Misrule, lining up his next shot carefully. "Much better the second time around. Or third in his case. See you in a few years, my friend. I'll keep your charges safe."

He stepped up to the chalk-marked line and let go of the paladin's skull in a smooth, underhanded motion. The skull bounced erratically down the hallway of the crypt, striking a triangularly-arranged set of soul-bottles. The skull struck the most forward of these bottles, sending all but two hurtling in various directions. All but two.

The Abbot harrumphed and contorted his face into a mask of disappointment. "Seven-ten split. This must be the plane of punishment."

The Castellan of the Condemned held an angry silence as his companion recovered the tossed skull. Then he said with a low threat in his voice, "You cheated."

"Cheated?" said the taller abishai, trying to transform his lizardlike features into a semblance of honesty. "Me?" he touched the spot where his heart would be-if he had one-just for effect.

"You…" said the Castellan, slamming a fist down. "You sent that vision to Toede, led him down the Abyss-

intended path to that anachronistic creature Jugger. And appeared to his companion when he was just about to be rescued. A heavenly figure in blue and white, indeed! That had your greasy clawprints all over it."

"Oh, I see," said the Abbot, drawing himself up to full height. "And I am supposed to abandon my own appointed tasks just because of some silly bet," he said crossly.

"It's not a bet," snarled the Castellan. "It's an experiment, one that was going swimmingly. The test subject was starting to put things together for us. Then you decided to pitch him in over his head!"

"I won't argue with you about terms," said the Abbot, who was of course arguing about terms. "But it is in my portfolio to make sure bad advice is heeded, correct?"

The Castellan was silent for a moment, then muttered, "Right."

"And through my bad advice, an ancient evil was freed, a city was wrecked and left leaderless, and a great repository of early ogre erotic epics destroyed," said the Abbot, leaning against a counter made of obsidian, polished with the ashes of fallen heroes. "I am just doing my job. In fact, I might even get a promotion out of this."

"If Judith doesn't sack you for goofing off in the first place," muttered the Castellan. The Abbot winced but let that comment slide.

Instead the taller fiend gave a snarl. "And it's not as if I were the first to influence our little pet noble-to-be."

"I had nothing to do with that coin flip," said the Castellan hotly.

"Coin flip?" said the Abbot, looking innocent as the driven sleet. "I wouldn't even suggest that you would have meddled so blatantly in your valuable experiment, to interfere with an affair of chance. I always thought you had more style than that. It never even entered my mind." He let his voice trail off, as if the idea were entering his mind.

"So?" prompted the Castellan.

The abishai nibbled on a problem nail, then admired his handiwork. "There was a little matter of the first assassination attempt, back at that little bar-the Jetties, was it?"

The Castellan was silent, but nodded.

"Think of it," said the Abbot, "A crowded room emptying of its patrons. Pandemonium erupting on all sides. The assassin wounds our subject in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt, then engages in mortal combat with his companion. Our subject limps across the room during this fray to a deceased barbarian prince, pulls a dagger,"-the abishai mimed the action-"and lets fly."

The Abbot flung the imaginary dagger at the Castellan, who continued to regard his fellow abishai in stony silence. "Wounded thrower, off-balance, tossing a weapon that is not designed to be thrown at a target engaged in melee," summarized the Abbot. "And yet it not only hits the intended target but strikes in such a way that it renders said target insensate immediately. And through it all no one present regarded this circumstance as odd." The taller abishai finished with a flourish. "If there was an area where I would have acted, where I would have influenced the normal course of events, that would have been it."

The silence hung in the air like a convicted criminal at the end of his last rope. The Castellan bit his words off. "You never mentioned that before."

The Abbot made a broad sweep of his arms, at least as broad as he could manage without scraping some soul-bottles to the floor. "I was not accused of impropriety, before."

Another silence. Then the Castellan sighed and said, "Well, we'll have to do it again."

The taller abishai rose, palms outward. "We have wasted enough time away from our official duties. If Judith found out…"

'Triple or nothing," put in the Castellan.

"We'll be missed from our posts for sure," said the

Abbot, smiling as if being caught missing were not truly a problem.

"Quadruple or nothing," added the Castellan.

"And all for some little bet," put in the Abbot.

"It's not a bet!" shouted the Castellan, then added more softly, "Quintuple or nothing. Five years on the line."

"But then, what is life without risk?" said the Abbot of Misrule, hefting the pickle jar with Toede's name on it. He smiled. "Shall we proceed?"

Chapter 20

In which Our Protagonist decides to defy convention and not go anywhere or get involved with anything. Not that this does him any good, but it's the thought that counts.

Toede awoke feeling flat, or at least a little smashed. Was there a party the previous evening? No, that was with the gnolls a few evenings back, and was followed by all sorts of unpleasantness. His last clear memory was of a tremendous force behind him, thrusting him through the windows of the manor and giving him a very brief look at the Blood Sea from a very high altitude.

Toede looked around and saw that he was once again on the bank of the same creek as before, beneath the same maple, several days' journey south of Flotsam. The trees were fresh with new leaves that caught the sun, shading the water in myriad hues of green and amber. A few lazy flies buzzed, and far to his left, a wood thrush began its throaty call.

"I understand now," said Toede. "It's all a plot to make me pay for my sins. The rest of eternity I'll be sent back here to suffer and die again and again."

He shuddered, but in the darkest corners of his hobgoblin heart, he had to stand back in awe and wonder at the fiendish genius who could come up with so elegant and cruel a punishment. Would that he someday might have an opportunity to use it on someone else!

Toede scanned the horizon and realized he was holding his breath, waiting for something to leap out of the bushes and throttle him. Or an army of gnolls on the horizon. Something. Anything.