Part 18 (1/2)

”If it takes a lifetime, it takes a lifetime. What's another eighty years,” said Begehren, ”after the thousand we have waited?”

Jack and Jill looked at each other, their eyes wide.

”But they won't get it, right?” asked the voice. ”They'll be killed.”

”One way or another,” Begehren replied. ”Almost certainly by the Eidechse von Feuer, die Meschenfleischfressende. And if not, once they hand over the Gla.s.s, we won't need them anymore. So I'll kill them myself.”

Jack went pale.

”I like him less and less,” whispered Jill.

The frog began to weep.

The bucket descended farther and farther into the impenetrable gloom, and beads of sweat began to stand out on Jack's and Jill's foreheads, faces, necks, arms. Farther, farther, farther. With every few yards the children descended, the heat climbed another degree. The air was so thick they could barely breathe. It was as if they were being lowered into a forge, as if the children were metal, and they would melt and re-form themselves in the heat of the sinkhole. At least, those were the strange thoughts that pa.s.sed through Jack's head as he gasped for breath. Jill was so hot she could not think of anything at all. And the frog was still weeping.

At last, the bucket landed with a b.u.mp on a craggy outcropping of stone. The children crawled out. There was no relief from the heat. The spears, which had been jarred from their hands when the bucket stopped suddenly in midair, lay on the black rock. One was shattered to pieces.

”Great,” said Jack.

”Oh, because it would have helped,” said the frog.

Jill said, ”Where do we go now?”

There was a small, dark tunnel that led away from the outcropping where they had landed. Jack pointed to it. Jill scanned the rest of the walls for any other pa.s.sageways or doors. There were none. ”Okay,” she said.

”Yeah,” said the frog. ”Fantastic.”

So Jack scooped up the remaining spear, took Jill's hand, and they walked into the dark, narrow, oppressively hot tunnel. Here, too, the rock glowed with that eerie phosph.o.r.escence. All it allowed the children to see, though, was that the tunnel was dark and rocky and descended gradually toward the center of the earth.

The children walked in silence, thinking about what Begehren had told them of the beast. He kills reflexively, as if he were born to. Were he even to breathe in your direction, you would be burned to a cinder. He is as cruel and perfect a killing machine as has ever lived. And they thought of all that they had heard of the Gla.s.s. It is a treasure horde so great a king could trade his kingdom for it and be counted a wise man . . . The greatest power, it is said, resides in that Gla.s.s . . . If you can't find it, you die.

Deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper into the darkness. The children stopped and tried to catch their breath. Even walking in this heat was a trial. Deeper and deeper. Hotter and hotter.

”I may be turning into a ca.s.serole,” the frog muttered.

Deeper.

Hotter.

Deeper.

Sweat poured off the children's faces. They could barely breathe for the heat.

The frog was now praying.

The dark tunnel continued down, down, down. The heat wrapped them in a bear hug and squeezed their lungs. But the heat was not the only thing that intensified. It began with Jill sniffing and wrinkling her nose. Then Jack said, ”What is that?” Soon, the children-and the frog-were covering their noses and mouths, trying not to breathe because of the horrible, putrefying stench. It was as if flesh were rotting, had been rotting, for a thousand years. Jack bent over, put his hand on the pockmarked black wall, and tried not to be sick. He gagged and held his throat. At last, he straightened up, and the children staggered on.

They became dizzier and dizzier with the heat and the smell. How will we fight this thing? Jack thought. I can barely walk. I can barely see straight. He would have said as much to Jill, but he didn't want to open his mouth, for fear of the pungent funk. And besides, he didn't need to, because Jill was wondering the same thing.

The tunnel became narrower, and narrower, and narrower, until Jack and Jill were crouching, and then crawling. Their s.h.i.+rts, their hair, their socks were soaked with sweat.

The rock beneath them became hotter, until the sweat that ran off of their faces sizzled as it landed on the black stone. The palms of their hands were burning.

The tunnel turned precipitously. The frog, peering out of Jack's pocket, said, ”Holy . . .”

Jack looked up. ”Have mercy . . .” he muttered.

Jill came up behind them. She opened her mouth. No sound came out at all.

CHAPTER TEN.

Eidechse Von Feuer, Der Menschenfleischfressende Once upon a time, there was a huge cavern under the earth.

Jack and Jill and the frog stared.

But the cavern was not what they were staring at.

At the back of the cavern, a torrent of lava poured out of a rock wall, red and black and lurid and glowing.

But that was not what they were staring at, either.

The torrent tumbled into a magma river that wound its way around the back of the cavern, hugging the pockmarked black wall closely and then, in the distance, feeding into an endless underground lava sea.

But the three travelers were also not staring at that.

They were staring at a small mountain that sat beside the winding lava river. The mountain was made not of rock, nor of magma, but of pink, fleshy skin. The mountain had a ridge like a backbone, and little valleys formed by small arms and legs, and a slope of a wide, flat tail. There was no head. But its body rose and fell with breath. They could see thin black bones through the pink skin, and in the distended bag of a belly, black organs wound around one another, pulsing.

”I don't want to do this . . .” Jill whispered.

Jack shook his head and muttered, ”Maybe we can go back and beg Begehren to let us up.”

”Or we can just live down here . . .”

The two children backed into the tunnel they'd come from as swiftly as they could.

But the frog said, ”Wait.”

”What?” hissed Jill.

”What?” said Jack, a little louder than he'd intended to.

Jill looked at Jack, eyes wide, finger before her lips. Jack slapped his hand over his mouth.

Silence.