“Silence, I say! Degenerate imbecile!”
“—agreement like I am now.” Shelyid frowned at the sorcerer. “And you shouldn’t call me those names, professor. That’s a clear violation of the contract, and you know it.”
I braced myself, sighing. I’d seen Shelyid and Zulkeh mix it up over a contract dispute. Tedious, tedious—lengthy. The mage’s temper full-matched by the dwarf’s stubbornness. Temper, as in volcano; stubbornness, as in Mule God.
To my relief, Shelyid broke away. The next thing I knew, he was rummaging in the huge sack. “But I always planned to make it up to you, Maurice! Honest!”
A moment later he emerged, clutching a package. “Look! Chocolates!”
* * *
Well, that did it. A word to the wise: if you’re ever faced by a huge and murderously furious troll, make sure you’ve got some chocolates on you. I can recommend caramel creams.
After Maurice had gobbled down the whole box, he belched and retreated from the hatchway. “Go on through,” he muttered, waving a huge paw. “I’ll wish you luck, all of you except Zulkeh.”
The troll leered. “Bet you didn’t tell them either, did you? The truth, I mean.”
Greyboar frowned. “What truth?”
Maurice’s leer was a sight to behold. “About what’s coming next. Bet the lousy mage just said all you had to do was get through this hatch and you’d have a clear shot at the Infernal Regions. Didn’t he? Boasted and bragged about how he knew a shortcut that’d avoid all those nasty Things From Below and It Came From Unders. Didn’t he?”
All eyes now turned to Zulkeh. “Yeah, as a matter of fact,” muttered Magrit. “He just got through spending the last twenty minutes bragging about it.”
The sorcerer drew himself up stiffly. “And ’tis true!” he exclaimed. Cleared his throat. “As far as it goes.”
All eyes were now squinting. As in: hostile suspicion.
“There is the matter of the Guide,” added Zulkeh. In as close to an abashed mumble as I’ve ever heard issue from the wizard’s lips.
“Oh, swell!” shrilled Wittgenstein. The salamander reared up on Magrit’s shoulder. “You’re talking about Virge, aren’t you? The Little Snotnose from Hell!”
Zulkeh was abashed. “Well . . . Well. The poetry’s not that bad.”
“It is too!” shrilled Wittgenstein. The creature swiveled his beady little red eyes onto the rest of us. “You’ll see!”
Chapter 26.
It Gets Worse
“There stands Jackie grotesquely, and he snarls,
examining the unworthy at the gate;
he judges and dispatches, tail in coils.
“He it was, cursed beast, who judged me so
on the earth above, in earlier life,
and said I was worthless every time.
“Never choosing me to be on his team!
Never! Not once! Sneering me and jeering,
Saying I was nothing but a clumsy shrimp!
“You see now his punishment—isn’t it grand?
Condemned to choose for ever and ever
between nothing but losers and fumblers.”
The intrepid guide, the young but wise Virge,
now led us through a hideous portal
into a vast and echoing cavern.
Men and insects alike trembled aghast
at the murky, unformed, endless reaches
of that grotto of abomination.
Naked forms of nubile adolescents
swept past as if caught in a mighty gale,
a torrent of pale, pimply visages,
Their eyes streaming tears, their mouths wide open,
their arms outstretched, a look of hopelessness
horrid on each and every girlish face.
“Ha! Ha!” cried young Virge, pointing to one girl.
“You see there that one? Pleading and begging?
Ha! Ha! That’s Judy Winfield herself,
“Who laughed at me when I asked her to the prom,
sneering and jeering, calling me a geek.
Who’s getting turned down now, Judy?
“Tell me that! Ha! Ha! Look at her whirl away!
Condemned to everlasting rejection!”
So spoke the doughty lad who was our guide.
* * *
Not that bad, sayeth the mage! Ha!
Judge for yourself, why don’t you?
And if you’re whining already, tough. We had to wade through the whole journey to the heart of the Inferno in that fashion.
Here, have some more:
* * *
We were now in the third circle, a realm
of cold and rain, a cursed and dreary place,
where an endless line of condemned sinners