The Beasts Of Valhalla

as she fumbled at the keyboard.

?

FUCKING WHAT

'Show them the kill button.'

Using the thumbs of both hands, Golly flipped open the tops on the cases of the boxes to reveal bright blue buttons.

'It's true that we want to keep you alive,' Loge continued as he glanced back and forth at Garth and me, 'but not to the extent of allowing you to attack either Obie or me. There'll be no repetition of what happened in the dungeon. If one of you does attack my son or me, I absolutely guarantee that the button on your box will be pushed; then it's your brains that will sizzle. Do I make myself clear?'

'You're a real spoilsport,' Garth said.

'Enough unnecessary unpleasantness,' Loge said, turning away. 'Come. Obie wants you to see the Treasure Room and Mount Doom.'

We went back to the ranch house, walked through it to the rear. Loge opened the door to what I thought was a closet; it turned out to be the entrance to a long, unlighted tunnel that had been carved out of the rock. He removed two gasoline-soaked torches from brackets on the wall, lit them with a cigarette lighter, handed one to his son. Then they led us down the tunnel, with Golly bringing up the rear.

At the end of the tunnel was a door with its edges set flush to the rock; like the door in the black cell, there was no keyhole.

Loge, his eyes glassy in the torchlight, turned to face us. 'Behold,' he intoned as he removed the ring medallion from around his neck and slowly passed it back and forth over the flame.

The metal of the medallion slowly changed its configuration to the shape of a key. Garth yawned loudly.

His spirits undampened, Loge turned and passed the flame across the surface of the door; a section of metal appeared to melt and flow apart to form a keyhole. Garth yawned again.

Loge turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door. Instantly, the air was filled with the music of Siegfried's Funeral March, from Gotterdammerung, and the darkness beyond the door began to glow like sunrise. The torches were extinguished and cast aside as the light came up, and we followed the Loges into the room.

This time Garth didn't yawn.

The Treasure Room, bathed in soft blue fluorescent light, was a huge circular chamber blasted out of the rock. On the wall opposite the door was an enormous, Cinerama-size panel of some material on which was projected a photomural of scenes from Wagner's Ring. The chamber was filled with an astonishing array of Wagnerian memorabilia. There was gold, of course, but even more impressive were other artifacts-special, undoubtedly rare, musical instruments, bejeweled swords and daggers, antique costumes, opera posters with Richard Wagner's distinctive signature scrawled across them.

'This is from a practice room at Bayreuth,' Loge announced proudly as he walked across the room and sat down at an old, scarred upright piano. 'Wagner himself played on it. The page on the stand here is from the original manuscript of Das Rheingold. Here; listen.'

And he began to play. He was actually quite good, and I might have enjoyed it if not for the fact that the recital was being given by the man responsible for the fact that Garth and I were standing around there dying. Impulsively, I marched across the room and slammed my fists down on the keys. The collar around my neck tightened, but did not choke.

'You don't like my playing?' Loge continued sardonically as he smiled at me. 'I'm told I have some talent.'

'Save it for somebody else, Loge.'

'You understand, of course, why there aren't too many people I can bring in here.'

'Oh, I understand perfectly.' It struck me that the medallion, which he had replaced around his neck, had returned to its original shape.

'You and your brother should feel honored that Obie and I choose to share it with you.'

'Once, everything in this room was rare, intriguing and beautiful; in your hands, they're just pieces for death and silence.'

'I understand that you have one of my pieces,' Loge said as he rose from the piano stool. 'I'm told it's an exquisite knife-which, incidentally, you used to lop off the hand of one of Stryder's men.'

'It was lost in the car crash and fire.'

'Too bad. I understand it was made of Damascus steel; truly one of a kind. It would have made a nice addition to my collection.'

'Hey, pimple nose,' Garth said to Obie Loge. 'What do you play with in here? This is all Wagner. No Tolkien?'

The boy flushed angrily, but Siegfried Loge just laughed. 'Relax, Obie. Remember what they say about sticks and stones. Show the gentlemen Mount Doom. It will make you feel better.'

The boy hesitated, then shrugged and walked over to a panel of switches that appeared to be part of a console controlling lights, a videotape machine, and a bank of six large television monitors. Obie Loge flipped a switch. The lights dimmed, and for a few moments my eyes had trouble making the transition. I started to remove my smoked glasses, then saw a reddish glow building where the photomural had been. Garth, sensing my difficulty, put his hand on my shoulder and guided me toward the red glow.

'Behold Mount Doom,' Obie Loge said, and he sounded almost as spooky as his father until he ruined it all with a giggle.

With the lights out, the projected photomural had disappeared, leaving a huge, transparent panel of what was probably Plexiglas. Standing next to Garth in front of the panel, I found myself staring out over what looked like a miniature Grand Canyon which wasn't so miniature. It was a great, stone-bounded cathedral or amphitheater with dimensions I could only guess at. The reddish glow emanated from fire somewhere far below the Treasure Room, and was swallowed up by darkness far above. On the great stone wall across the chasm, perhaps two hundred yards away, three different series of steps running in different directions from a central point high to the right had been carved out of the stone, which was pockmarked with caves. There were bones-bare, polished bones-and scraps of clothing strewn over the steps at three different sites. Even at that distance and without the evidence of the clothes, I'd have been able to tell that the skulls were unmistakably human.

'How quaint,' I muttered. 'I don't know why you don't show this to Hugo. He's really into clinics.'

'What the hell is that?!' Garth said, shying as something big and brown flapped down out of the darkness, banged against the Plexiglas by his head, then soared on hot air currents up out of sight.

The Loges looked at each other, laughed. 'We don't know,' the elder Loge said. 'We haven't been able to figure out a way to capture one.'

I turned to look at the scientist. 'You don't know what it is?'

'No,' Loge said, grinning. 'As a matter of fact, there are a great many curious things in Mount Doom. Obie likes to put things in there to see what happens. The results, as you see, have been totally unexpected; serendipity in science. What's become of the things he drops in there isn't a question that's likely to be answered soon. We've never known a man to go in there and come out again.'

Wheeling around, I fixed my gaze on the apex of the three sets of steps; I could just barely make out the outlines of a door cut into the rock. 'The black cell,' I whispered in horror as two more of the things swooped past; the flying things were leathery, looked something like bloated pterodactyls with hair and teeth.

'Right,' Obie Loge said with obvious satisfaction. 'Man, you should see those fuckers attack.'

'Totally unexpected,' Siegfried Loge repeated in a somewhat distant tone. 'There was no way to predict… I really should have paid more attention to what you threw in there, Obie.'

'Aw, shit,' Garth drawled. 'This is really a bummer. What you need in there is a dragon. What's a Mount Doom without a dragon?'

Once again the Loges looked at each other and tittered; this time, I thought I detected more than a hint of nervousness in their looks and laughter.

'Where did they come from originally?' I asked, watching one of the leathery beasts drop down out of sight toward the furnace glow below.