I was able to move the stone easily, and I saw beyond it a dark opening just large enough for a man to enter if he crawled on his face.
He gave a dry cackling laugh and nodded his head.
"There, my son, is the passageway that leads to my treasure," he said. "Do with my treasure as you like, and with all my earthly property. But for now, I must have my vows."
And again astonishing me, he snatched up two twigs from the wood and rubbed them together so fiercely they were soon burning with bright small flames.
This he tossed at the heap, and the pitch in it caused the fire to leap up at once, throwing an immense light over the curved ceiling and the stone walls.
I gasped and stepped back. The riot of yellow and orange color enchanted and frightened me, and the heat, though I felt it, did not cause me a sensation I understood. There was no natural alarm that I should be burned by it. Rather the warmth was exquisite and I realized for the first time how cold I had been. The cold was an icing on me and the fire melted it and I almost moaned.
He laughed again, that hollow, gasping laugh, and started to dance about in the light, his thin legs snaking him look like a skeleton dancing, with the white face of a man. He crooked his arms over his head, bent his torso and his knees, and turned round and round as he circled the fire.
"Mon Dieu!" I whispered. I was reeling. Horrifying it might have been only an hour ago to see him dancing like this, but now in the flickering glare he was a spectacle that drew me after it step by step. The light exploded on his satin rags, the pantaloons he wore, the tattered shirt.
"But you can't leave me!" I pleaded, trying to keep my thoughts clear, trying to realize what he had been saying. My voice was monstrous in my ears. I tried to make it lower, softer, more like it should have been. "Where will you go!"
He gave his loudest laugh then, slapping his thigh and dancing faster and farther away from me, his hands out as if to embrace the fire.
The thickest logs were only now catching. The room for all its size was like a great clay oven, smoke pouring out its windows.
"Not the fire." I flew backwards, flattening myself against the wall. "You can't go into the fire!"
Fear was overwhelming me, as every sight and sound had overwhelmed me. It was like every sensation I had known so far. I couldn't resist it or deny it. I was half whimpering and half screaming.
"Oh, yes I can," he laughed. "Yes, I can!" He threw back his head and let his laughter stretch into howls. "But from you, fledgling," he said, stopping before me with his finger out again, "promises now. Come, a little mortal honor, my brave Wolfkiller, or though it will cleave my heart in two, I shall throw you into the fire and claim for myself another offspring. Answer me!"
I tried to speak. I nodded my head.
In the raging light I could see my hands had become white. And I felt a stab of pain in my lower lip that almost made me cry out.
My eyeteeth had become fangs already! I felt them and looked at him in panic, but he was leering at me as if he enjoyed my terror.
"Now, after I am burned up," he said, snatching my wrist, "and the fire is out, you must scatter the ashes. Hear me, little one. Scatter the ashes. Or else I might return, and in what shape that would be, I dare not contemplate. But mark my words, if you allow me to come back, more hideous than I am now, I shall hunt you down and burn you till you are scarred the same as I, do you hear me?"
I still couldn't bring myself to answer. This was not fear. It was hell. I could feel my teeth growing and my body tingling all over. Frantically, I nodded my head.
"Ah, yes." He smiled, nodding too, the fire licking the ceiling behind him, the light leaking all about the edges of his face. "It's only mercy I ask, that I go now to find hell, if there is a hell, or sweet oblivion which surely I do not deserve. If there is a Prince of Darkness, then I shall set