Mock scraped on rock and the moonlight was cut off above them. Audrey was lying in a ball beside Jenny near the bottom of the slope. Dee had been shoved in backward and was sprawled at the very bottom, legs higher than her head. In those first moments Jenny didn't stop to wonder how she could still see either of them. She said, "Are you all right?" to Dee and then wrapped her arms around Audrey comfortingly.
Audrey was shaking. Making little moaning sounds.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry____" Jenny said, hugging
her.
"It's not your fault." Dee was picking herself up, her fine-boned face contemptuous. "What's her problem, anyway?"
Jenny twisted her head to snap at Dee, but the words never got out. She could now see the reason they weren't in pitch darkness. There was a semi -
circle of lanterns around the bottom of the slope, and holding the lanterns were people.
Dee had fallen silent. The lantern light reflected off faces that were disturbing to say the least.
The elves were very pale, very beautiful... but very strange. Their eyes were slanted in a way that reminded Jenny of the Visitors'. Their cheekbones were almost too high and sharp. And they stood oddly.
They didn't look as if they had any sympathy to appeal to.
One of them said something. Jenny thought it was the same language that the young men outside had used, but the elf's voice was more liquid-and more cold. It was obvious that he was ordering the girls up.
Jenny didn't want to obey. She was irrationally frightened by these pale beautiful people. Then she saw that maybe her fear wasn't so irrational.
They were like animals-or parts of them were. They were deformed.
The elf who had spoken had one normal hand and one hand like a cow's split hoof. It was black and shiny like patent leather. Jenny was afraid she was going to be sick.
Another of them had a tail hanging out of his breeches-a long, pink naked tail like a rat's. It swished. A third had two little horn-buds swelling on his forehead. A fourth had glossy dark hair growing on his neck.
Every one of them had some deformity. And they were real. Not like the pasted-together monstrosities Jenny had seen in the Ripley's Believe It or Not! exhibit.
"Audrey, you've got to get up," she whispered, swallowing the bile that had risen in her throat. "Audrey, if you don't I think they'll make you." Then, with desperate inspiration: "Do you want them to see you lying here like this? I bet your mascara's smeared halfway down your face."
The appeal to Audrey's pride worked where nothing else might have. She slowly sat up, brushing at her cheeks.
"It's waterproof," she said defiantly. Her fingers went automatically to adjust the combs in her French twist, and then she saw the elves.
Her chestnut eyes widened until they showed white all around. She was staring at the cow's-hoof hand. Jenny gripped her arm tightly.
"Are they what you thought they were?"
Audrey pressed her lips together and nodded.
The elf spoke again, sharply, stepping forward. Audrey cringed back. Slowly and carefully Jenny urged her to stand.
"Audrey, we've got to go with them," she whispered. She was afraid that if Audrey balked, the elves were going to touch them. The thought of that-of being touched by that shiny hoof or by the flipper she saw one of the others had-was more than Jenny could bear. "Please, Audrey," she whispered.
It was easy for the elves to lead them. All they had to do was close in from one direction, and the girls would move in the other.
They walked like that, surrounded by a circle of lanterns, down a passage that sloped on and on. Other passages branched away. Clearly the place was big-and they were going deeper and deeper into it.
Walking calmed Jenny a little. The rocks around
them took every imaginable shape-some like twisting antlers, others like windblown grass. There were lacy falls of angel hair, and huge columns covered with formations like exquisite flowers or the gills of mushrooms.
The air smelled like rain-damp earth. It was surprisingly warm.
Jenny tightened her supporting grip on Audrey's arm.
"Say something to them," she suggested. "Ask them where we're going."
In her own way Audrey was as brave as Dee. Her spiky eyelashes were starred together from crying, and she didn't look at the elf beside her. But she spoke to him in level tones.
"He says they're taking us to the Erlking," she said after a moment. Now Jenny could hear taut, shaking control in her voice. "That means-elf king, I think. I remember the story about the Erlking now. He's a kind of evil spirit who haunts the Black Forest. He's supposed to-take people. Especially young girls and children."
Dee pounced. "Why girls?"
Audrey spoke between clenched teeth. "You guess. But all the dark elves are that way. Well, look at them. They're all men. It's a male race."
With a shock, Jenny realized that it was true. The delicacy of their features had fooled her. Every one of their captors was beautiful-and male.
Dee's grin was bloodthirsty. "Time to fight."
"No," Jenny said tensely. Her heart was pounding, but she tried to quiet it. "There are too many of them; we wouldn't have a chance. And anyway, we're supposed to face our nightmares, remember? If the
Erlking is what Audrey's most afraid of, he must be what we have to face."
"It's a stupid nightmare anyway," Dee hissed, her supple shoulders hunching as if an ice cube were going down her back.
"Believe me," Audrey said bitingly, "I wish you weren't in it with me."
The two girls ignored each other as they walked on through subterranean caverns of cathedral spaciousness. Glittering white gypsum crystals powdered everything, catching the lantern light. Coarse rock dust crunched underneath Jenny's feet.
"I don't understand," Audrey whispered. "This can't have come out of my mind. I've never seen anything like it."
"I have," Dee said, and even her voice was subdued. "Spelunking in New Mexico. But it wasn't so-much."
At last they reached the biggest cavern of all.
They passed giant red pillars like coral reefs which gave Jenny the disconcerting feeling of being underwater.
They were heading straight for an enormous wall of flame-colored rock. It wasn't flat. It went rippling up and up like an inverted Niagara Falls. At floor level there was an irregularly shaped gap in the wall-like an entrance.
"The castle," Audrey translated quietly.
They passed through the gap in the red walls.
Inside, the elves moved to separate the girls into two groups. It happened so fast that Jenny didn't have time to react. All in an instant she was being herded away, and when she twisted her head frantically she saw Dee and Audrey being borne in the opposite direction. She saw Audrey's copper head bobbing and heard Dee's voice raised in fury. Then Dee's voice faded, and Jenny was led through a gap into a large room.
One of her captors said something ending with "Erlkodnig," and they all walked out. When Jenny looked through the gap, she found they were standing sentry on either side.
Now what?
She looked around. The rock formations here were like huge sand castles, half melted by water, in white and gold. Jenny realized she was seeing by moonlight and looked up. The ceiling had openings in it like skylights or chimneys in the rock. She studied them for a while.
Finally there was nothing to do but wait-and worry. What was happening to Tom right now? she wondered.
Think about the riddle, she told herself firmly. It'll pass the time, and it might be useful.
I am just two and two. I am hot. I am cold. I'm the parent of numbers that cannot be told. I'm a gift beyond measure, a matter of course, And I'm yielded with pleasure-when taken by force.
Suddenly she had it. Yes! Something that could be hot and passionate or cold and impersonal. Something that could be the "parent" of untold numbers of people-because there was no counting how many babies had gotten started with it. Something
that was just two and two-two lips touching two lips.
A kiss.
Jenny smiled in triumph. She'd solved the riddle. She could get one of the others free.
There was no question, of course, about who it would be. Much as she loved her friends, Tom would always come first.
The only problem with having solved the riddle was that she now had nothing to think about-except whatever was going to happen to her. The elf who'd left had said "Erlkodnig." The Erlking? Was that who she was waiting for?
What kind of deformity would the Erlking have? she wondered. Hooves? Horns?
If he's king, he probably has something worse than all the others, she thought, and her heart chilled.
Someone came through the gap in the stone, and Jenny braced herself. The next minute she realized how dense she'd been.
He was wearing a white tunic and breeches and soft white boots. They showed off how lithe and smoothly muscled he was. In the moonlight his hair was silver as a mirror, and he was smiling.
"Julian."
"Welcome," he said, "to the Erlking's castle."
The last time they had spoken, Jenny had been furious with him. It was hard to keep that in mind now. The white leather was so soft looking, and it clung to him, hip and thigh. And there was something about a guy who looked at you with eyes like a starving tiger's. All at once Jenny felt disconcerted. Tom always looked so good in ordinary clothes-but he was very conservative, never would dress up even at Halloween. Julian, by contrast, obviously got off on outrageous.
His broad leather belt showed how flat his stomach was, emphasized his narrow hips. It was modestly encrusted with sapphires. Jenny wished she had one like it.
"The Erlking, huh? Enjoying the part?"
"Immensely," Julian assured her gravely.
"At least you're talking to me in this nightmare. Not like the UFO one, I mean."
"Jenny. I will happily talk to you all night."
"Thank you, but there's a time limit, and I'd rather have my friends back."
"Say the word."
Jenny looked at him, startled, and then realized what word he meant. "No," she said. "I'll do it the hard way. We're going to get through all the nightmares, you know. We're going to win the Game."
"I admire your confidence."
"You can admire my success-starting now. I've solved your riddle, and you're a male chauvinist pig. It is not given with pleasure when taken by force."
"What isn't?"
"A kiss." She turned to face him fully. "That's the answer, isn't it? And you told me if I solved the riddle, you'd let one of my friends go."
"Wrong." He waited for her reaction, eyes glinting in a wicked smile. "I told you if you gave me the answer, I'd let one of your friends go. But you haven't given it to me yet." His eyes lingered on her lips. "Would you like to now?"
Fury sparked in Jenny. "You-!" She turned away
so he wouldn't have the satisfaction of seeing her angry.
"I've upset you. You're offended," he said. He sounded genuinely penitent. Jenny couldn't keep up with these mercurial changes of mood. "Here, I'll give you something to make it up to you."