Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming

Chapter 11

The dwarves sang as they went down the tunnel, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth, around doglegs and over camelbacks, skirting cul-de-sacs and precipices and wading across icy streams. It was so dark that Azzie's eyes began to ache from trying too hard to see something. They went on, and they sang other songs after a while, songs in a language Azzie did not understand, and at last they came to an opening which let out onto a large underground plain.

"Where's this?" Azzie asked. They ignored him. Many little hands held him tight as they untied him from the chair and tied him to something else. By touch Azzie thought it was a framework of some sort, made of metal and bits of wood. When he tried to take a step, something moved under his feet. He realized after a few moments that he had been tied securely to the inside of a big wheel, like a waterwheel. His feet were free, but his hands were securely bound to handles that came out of the wheel's sides.

"This," Rognir said, "is a work wheel. You walk inside it and it turns, and through a series of gears, it moves a wheel that turns rods and finally operates machinery in one of the upper chambers."

"Interesting," Azzie said. "But so what?"

"You are expected to walk on the wheel, thus turning it.

"You are expected to walk on the wheel, thus turning it. You will thus help us work and you will pay off your debt that way. It should only take a few hundred years."

"Forget it," Azzie said.

"Suit yourself," Rognir said. "All right, boys, open the sluice gate."

There was a grinding sound from overhead. Then some­thing started falling from above him. It was a rain of excrement, as Azzie's nose quickly told him. But it was not ordinary human or demonic excrement. Azzie had spent plenty of time handling that. This was excrement of an orduosiry so extreme that his nasal receptors tried to commit hara-kiri.

"What is that stuff?" he cried.

"Aged fermented dragon shit," Rognir told him. "We're close to a dragon's lair, and we've tapped it from the bottom as an incentive for you to go to work."

Azzie's feet started moving of their own accord. The wheel turned. After a moment, the rain of dragon shit stopped.

"The way it works," Rognir said, "the dragon shit starts when you stop treading, and continues until you start up again."

"But what about rest periods?" Azzie asked.

"We'll tell you when you can rest," Elgar said, and the other dwarves laughed.

"But listen to me! I've got important things to do! You must let me out of here so I can make arrangements! I'll pay you back - "

"You will indeed," Rognir said. "In kind or in labor. Check with you later, demon."

And so the dwarves departed. Azzie was left alone, pump­ing and thinking desperate thoughts.