Silence fell. All eyes turned to Gwendolyn.
“Oh, no,” I moaned. (Very softly, mind.)
Sure enough: “I need your help, brother.”
* * *
The words were choked out, as if she were trying not to say them. The next words, even more so: “And yours too, Ignace.”
She wasn’t even looking at me when she said it. Just slumped in her chair, staring at the floor.
My temper started to rise. “What’s this? All of a sudden I’m not the little scuzzball what ruined your brother’s moral fiber? All of a sudden—urfff!”
Angela’s elbow hit me like a rocket, right in the wind. An instant later, Jenny’s hands were clapped over my mouth.
“Just ignore him,” she said to Gwendolyn, very sweetly. “Keep talking. Please.”
Gwendolyn raised her head. When she caught sight of the three of us, she barked a laugh. “What a picture! My congratulations—Jenny, isn’t it? And you too, Angela. I was never able to shut him up that quick.”
I snapped back a hot retort. “Grrrmrrgrnrrbrr!” Jenny’s hands clamped down, and I fell silent. Not so much from the pressure, but from the sight of Angela’s elbow. Cocked, and ready for another shot.
Gwendolyn shook her head ruefully. “You are a piece of work, Ignace. Only person I know who gets angrier when he gets a compliment than an insult.”
She ran the fingers of her left hand through her thick mass of long, black hair. It was a gesture which I remembered well, from the years back. As always, her fingers got a bit tangled up. Gwendolyn’s hair wasn’t quite as kinky as her brother’s. But, then, she had a lot more of it.
The gesture drained away all my anger in an instant. I felt myself slumping a little. Damn woman! I never had been able to maintain a proper spite against Gwendolyn. Not when she was in my presence, anyway.
“The reason I need you too, Ignace,” she said softly, “is because Greyboar’s always a little lost without you. You and your fussing, and your mother hen routine.”
She emitted a chuckle that was more in the way of a sigh. “Missed it myself, tell you the truth, all these years.”
She stared at me for a moment, as if she were studying something. Then, sighed again and squared her shoulders, turning her head toward Greyboar.
“You heard about Benvenuti?”
The strangler nodded. “Yeah. Not much. He got caught, and then seems to have escaped.”
Gwendolyn shook her head. “Not exactly. He escaped from the dungeons, yes. But after that—” Her hand waved about, vaguely. “We’re not sure what happened. I asked my dwarf friends to see if they could find out anything. They were able to pick up his trail, eventually. He must have gotten lost in that labyrinth under the Pile, and kept going downward. But—”
She fell silent, tightening her lips. Then: “The dwarves tracked him to one of the entrances to the netherworld. Further than that, they wouldn’t go. Dwarves stay clear of those depths. Always.”
“And rightly so!” exclaimed Zulkeh. “Dwarves are expressly forbidden any congress with the netherworld. Both in Holy Writ and in all the prophetic commentaries. ‘Tis because they are damned in the Lord’s eyes, of course.”
I tried—failed—to follow the logic. But Zulkeh was steaming right along.
“The Lord’s decree, needless to say, is rigorously enforced by the powers in the netherworld. As a result, your average dwarf is firmly convinced that he can under no circumstances survive a journey into the infernal regions. Superstitious dolts! The truth, of course, is quite otherwise. I have studied the problem extensively, and I can assure you—”
“Enough!” bellowed Magrit. “Let Gwendolyn finish, for the sake of all creation, before you bore us all to death!”
Gwendolyn spoke hurriedly. “I finally asked Zulkeh for his opinion. He consulted—something—and said that Benvenuti apparently had some trouble with the devils—”
I couldn’t suppress a sudden hysterical laugh, gurgling up past Jenny’s fingers. Apparently had some trouble with the devils! Gee, no kidding?
“—and wound up getting pitched out of the infernal regions altogether. Into—into—you know.”
My humor vanished entirely. Half in a daze, I heard Greyboar’s rumble.
“The story’s true? There is a Place Even Worse Than Hell?”