by Paul Barrett
“Move,” Aladale said. One of the elves led the way across the bridge, and we plodded behind him. Following elves seemed to have become my life lately.
I took advantage of the short walk across the bridge to study my surroundings. It allowed me to ignore the carvings of demons that leered from the bridge railing.
The cavern was massive. I couldn’t see the ceiling, though the sense of air in the room told me it hung at least a hundred feet above us. That explained why the stairs leading here came down so far.
Despite the situation, the clockwork machine impressed me. True gnome craftsmanship shimmered off every gear. It stood thirty feet tall, made of gleaming dark wood formed into a giant lattice. Gems large enough to pay for houses sat embedded into the planks at regular intervals. The upright rectangular boxes on the platform had been stained black. Golden glyphs dotted their surfaces. At the foot of each sat a sluice made of clay. The channels ran to the center of the platform. They ended in a bowl-shaped depression with a hole in the center.
Wooden beams rose from the corners of the platform in graceful curves, meeting ten feet above the platform floor. Suspended from them was another round device that had a series of gears and pistons protruding from the top. The machinery ran to a giant iron crane arm with a ten-foot-long auger at its end.
Underneath the platform, a pipe ran down the center of the tower. I saw it through the lattice only because it shone gold, a color that always caught my attention. Runes of black covered the pipe, unreadable from the distance despite their size. Its purpose became clear when I saw where it ran. At the tower’s bottom, it bent and ended at a twenty-foot wide pit carved in the rock.
I couldn’t tell the depth of the pit because dark liquid filled it. At least thirty elves surrounded the impromptu pond. Bodies of goblinoids and humans lay in a pile. A streak of red ran from the pit’s edge to the mound. Two elves were tossing another body onto the stack.
“Great Selzak,” Liz said, invoking the name of her people’s patron. “What have they done?”
“I told you the rite required a lot of blood,” Quinitas said, his voice faint with nausea.
“The four of you have the honor of adding to it and completing the ritual,” Siralanna said as we drew close.
“I hope you die in a fire, bitch,” I said. I would worry about Quinitas dying if I thought my wishes had any power.
“That’s not very nice,” Siralanna pouted. She was still beautiful. The black and red ceremonial robe accented her curvy figure. “Pater Loray, please teach Snazdaggin some manners.”
“Of course…Great Mistress,” Loray wheezed. He extended two fingers and made a sharp downward motion. He said something that sounded like “Axion.”
Pain roiled through my gut. It felt like the agony of eating spoiled meat. My stomach cramped and punched my heart. I dropped to my knees and suppressed a groan.
“Stop it,” Liz said.
The magician raised his hand. The pain lessened. A dull throb remained. My abdomen twitched.
“Anything else you’d like to say,” Siralanna purred.
I gave her a broad smile. “I hope you die in a really big fire.”
“I’ll second that,” Klaus said.
“All in favor say aye,” Liz finished.
Siralanna shook her head. Offered us her gleaming smile. “You all should have perished when you had the chance. Perhaps it’s just as well. The ritual will be so much stronger with the blood of all four races that opposed the Twins blended into the mix. The demons will be pleased.”
“You won’t be around to enjoy your success if you kill me,” Quinitas said.
“Always so dramatic, brother,” Siralanna said. “I don’t have to kill any of you. The mixture is ready, and the ritual is set. All I need now is the catalyst blood and the final incantations. A few ounces obtained with the falchion will be plenty. Of course, I will let your friends be the demons’ first meal. I’m sure they’ll be hungry.”
“I won’t let you do this,” Quinitas said.
“You can’t stop me,” Siralanna said.
Quinitas threw his head back. It smashed the nose of the elf behind him, who fell away with a cry. Quinitas threw himself over the railing.
“Brother!” Siralanna screamed.
Quinitas stopped in midair. He had fallen no further than ten feet.
The mage had his hands out. His fingers danced as if he worked a marionette. His eyes bugged out more than usual. Sweat stained his lined face.
A grim-faced Quinitas slowly floated back up and settled on the bridge. Two guards moved in and grabbed him.
The mage let out a whoosh. He fell against the railing. “I…told…you,” he wheezed in his nasal voice.
Siralanna nodded, her face thoughtful. “You surprised me,” she told Quinitas. “I didn’t think you had it in you, but Pater Loray said you might try it. Good thing I listened to him so he could already have the spell on you. Otherwise, you might have succeeded.” She regarded Loray. He sucked in breath through clenched teeth. “Are you going to live?” she asked in annoyance.
“I will…be fine.” To prove it, he stood up straight and ran his hands over his robes.
“Good. Then we should get started. Let’s get them all prepared.”
“Sister,” I said, “I’m not going to let you use me to summon a dirt clod.”
Klaus grumbled behind me.
“Really?” Siralanna gave me another smile. This one didn’t even try to be friendly. “Guards.”
Something hit the back of my head. I went out like a torch dropped into a water bucket.
I came to bound inside one of the upright boxes, held by two leather straps. Thick rope around my wrists held my hands together.
The boxes were shallow, the walls four inches at most. My usual head throbbing had a companion. The back of my skull hammered where the unseen elf had smashed me. A breeze across my feet told me they had taken my boots. I could see Liz in the box across from Klaus and me to my right. No one occupied the box on the left. I saw no signs of Quinitas. I had to wonder if I had been duped yet again. Had the elf planned this whole charade with his sister? It seemed like an excessive amount of trouble, but the longevity of elves warped their worldview. They would devise elaborate schemes just to relieve the boredom of living hundreds of years.
Neither of my remaining companions was conscious. I saw a darkening of the green skin around Liz’s eyes and a trickle of blood from her nose. She had put up a fight. Good girl.
The chanting had started again, coming from within the pit. Words drifted up to me, spoken in a language that I shuttered to recognize. Moribun. The language of the demons. A language that should never be uttered this side of the Abyss.
The falchion was missing from the cloth-covered table in the center of the platform. I didn’t see Siralanna or the insane mage.
Then the elfette spoke to her minions below. “The time is now, my people. Time for Clan Greenstreet to rule, as they should have done for these many years past.”
Her voice came from behind and to the right. She had to be standing on the bridge.
She continued talking, stirring her sycophants up with deranged phrases about the glory of her Clan and how the demons would help them usher in a new age. An age where elves ruled supreme. She had completely lost her mind.
I tried to block her out and think of a way to escape. I didn’t want to be a demon snack. The rope held my hands and feet tight. I had no weapons. Once the demons had been summoned, they would have to unstrap me to serve me as an appetizer. By then my only hope would be to lodge in the demon’s throat and choke him. I needed to do something before Siralanna completed the ritual.
I stared at the stalactite-riddled ceiling, wondering if salvation might lie up there. Before I could study it, Siralanna blocked my view. Her still beautiful face peered down on me. “Awake, I see. Good. I wouldn’t want you to miss anything.”
She lifted the falchion. It gleamed golden in the torchlight. As she
held it aloft, I noticed the edge had turned black. Evil roiled from it. My stomach clenched.
“Look,” I said, “there has to be a better way to settle your problems with Good Wizard Gos―”
“Don’t say his name in my presence!” she snarled at me, putting her face close to mine. Her words smelled of cloves and cinnamon―again, totally wrong for the situation. Did elves just naturally have pleasant breath? “He is a usurper, a cheat, egotistical, cocky, and arrogant.”
“Three of those could be used to describe you and your brother,” I said, “but nobody’s trying to unleash the forces of hell on you.”
“He stole our rightful place from us.”
“Boo-hoo. Pampered little elf princess doesn’t get what she wants, so she’s going to throw a tantrum.”
She put the falchion against my throat. The cold blade drained the heat out of me. “I am a princess, and soon this city will realize it. And then the whole world!”
“If you live long enough to enjoy it.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that. You should be more concerned for yourself.” She looked past me, toward the bridge. “It’s about time you finished,” she said. “Talking to this dirt rat was beginning to irritate me.”
She pulled the falchion away. I saw a line of my blood on it for a moment before the sword absorbed it. I managed to avoid staining my smallclothes and turned my head to the left. I stared over the lip of the box. Quinitas walked toward me. Firelight gleamed off the silver circlet around his forehead. The shorter Loray followed him.
“What have you done?” I said.
The backhand from Siralanna surprised me more than it hurt.
“Be silent,” she said as my head thumped against the back of the box. “You’ve been a great help, but you’ve also been a complete pain in my ass. The only thing I need you to do now is bleed a little, and then die screaming as the Demon Twins decide who gets your liver and who gets your testicles.”
Elves may have a better culture, but when it comes down to it, they’re as brutish as the rest of us.
“My apologies…uh, mistress,” Loray said, bowing and scraping in his voice even as he stared at her. “He is…resilient. Well, I mean,” He let out his wheezy, irritating giggle. “He was.”
Quinitas stared at me. No recognition played in his dull golden eyes. The whole of Clan Greenstreet hadn’t suddenly gone psychotic. Siralanna had put them under her will. I glanced at the bug-eyed mage. He wore no silver circlet. His strange smile made me wonder who was controlling whom.
“I really should have listened to your brother and said no,” I told Siralanna. “You’re one fucked up flutter.”
Her earlier anger had disappeared. She turned her charming smile on me. “It’s way too late to win your way out with flattery. We need to complete the ritual as the moons rise.”
“You need both moons at full dark,” I said. “That’s not until tomorrow.”
She walked over and stared down at me. “A dwarf astrologer,” she said with an amused quirk of her mouth. “I never realized you looked up from the mud long enough to even know there was a sky. Full dark isn’t necessary. That’s just superfluous drama. As long as the moons are hanging up there, it all works. The blood and the harmonics of the machine are the important factors.” She ran a hand through her long, gold hair. Reset the circlet resting on her forehead. “I suspect such things are beyond your understanding.”
“More like beyond my boredom threshold,” I said. I didn’t want her to know how my bowels roiled with terror. I had to figure out something, and quick. “I know more than you think. I’ve dealt with the Demon Twins before. Summoning them in one thing. Getting them to do what you want is another.”
She let out a tinkling laugh. “You haven’t dealt with the twins. You’ve dealt with the minions, and you did that poorly.”
Her comment angered me. Even having won, she still wanted to rub my past in my face. “I look forward to watching the demons bite you in half before they eat me. They always turn on the summoner first.”
“That’s because the other summoners didn’t know how to do it. The falchion has been enchanted with a portion of my soul. As soon as we combine my blood with the reservoir, as well as the blood of you and your friends, the twins will be bound to me and do what I say. That should make you happy. No war. No destroyed city. Just a few dead wizards and myself as ruler, as it should have always been. I will be a benevolent ruler, and more just to the lesser races than the humans have been. I’ll even let you and your friends go, provided you leave the city and never return.”
I wanted to believe her, but I finally saw past the dazzling voice and gorgeous features. Subtle madness lurked behind her violet eyes. It also revealed itself in her actions. Sane people didn’t raise the dead. They also didn’t enslave their entire Clan. She seemed to have forgotten that she had already promised me first place on the buffet platter.
“You’ll be benevolent until someone does something you don’t like,” I said. “Then your pet demons will have another meal. I’ve seen what you do with minimal power. I can only imagine your insanity when you have real power.”
“My power is far from minimal,” she said. “Enough of this scintillating conversation. Everything is prepared. Let’s finish this ritual.”
She handed the falchion to Quinitas. He took it, his eyes dull, jaw slack. She looked at Loray. “He knows what to do?”
The mage nodded. “Take your place in the channel, and he will do the rest.”
She nodded in reply. Her violet eyes turned back to me. “You should probably know when I said I only needed a little blood from you―”
“You lied,” I said. “No great surprise there.”
“No, that was the truth. However, I’ve decided more blood certainly can’t hurt the ritual. So I’m going to drain you and your friends and then let the demons eat you. They don't care if the meat is cold.”
A plan came to mind, even more half-formed and desperate than my usual plans. Still, better than nothing. “Then I’m going to ask one favor.”
She ran a smooth hand over my bearded face. “If it’s to die burning in a large fire as you so eloquently suggested before, I’m afraid I’ll have to deny that request.”
“That’s not it, although you’re still free to grant that wish,” I said. “Let Quinitas kill me first.”
She considered it with a frown. “I don’t think so. The blood has to mingle while we recite the chant to ensure the machine creates the proper conve—oh, why am I even bothering? You’re going to bleed out slowly and then die. So you will have plenty of time to think about all the mistakes you’ve made in your life.”
“Letting you into my office ranks right up there as the biggest,” I said.
“Charming to the end. In another time and place, we could have been friends. For that cute remark, I’ll let my brother cut you last. You can watch your friends die before the light goes out in your eyes.”
I frowned. That was going to make my ill-formed idea even more hazardous.
Siralanna looked back at her brother. “Start with the hobgoblin,” she said. “A cut on each leg and the bottom of each foot. Make it painful. Teach him he should have come to me with the sword instead of attempting his ill-conceived rebellion. Then the chizard.”
Sometime during my exchange with the elfette, Liz and Klaus had regained consciousness. Siralanna walked over and ran a thin hand under Liz’s snout. “Shame to kill such a beautiful creature. I could let you live if you agree to be my concubine and satisfy my every desire.”
“If I agree, will you let Spade and Klaus go?”
Siralanna offered a thoughtful look. I knew well enough now to know it was a sham. After a few moments, she said, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Then instead of dying in a fire,” Liz said, “why don’t you shove a blazing poker up your twat and parboil your innards?”
That was my girl. Fierce even in defeat.
Siralanna had a different assessm
ent. She punched Liz in the nose. Blood flowed.
Liz’s head rocked back and snapped forward. She recovered and glared at the elf. “You’re going to regret that,” Liz said in a tone that had made grown men weep.
“I’m sure I will,” Siralanna said as she shook her hand. “Your hide is tougher than I expected.”
“Wait until you feel my teeth.” Liz’s face bunched in concentration while Siralanna watched. After several seconds Liz’s eyes widened in surprise.
Siralanna laughed. “Come now; you should realize by now that I’m not stupid. If I can keep my brother from using his magic, I can keep you from turning into a gecko and slinking off. That’s enough delays. Let’s get this ritual finished. I’ve got a city to capture.” She walked over and put herself in the fourth box, then nodded to Quinitas.
Blank-faced, the elf placed himself in front of Klaus. The hob’s lips drew back, revealing his jagged yellow teeth. He struggled against the leather straps. Useless.
Quinitas brought the falchion down and pressed it against Klaus’s left leg. He sliced downward. Klaus hissed as dark green blood leaked from the cut. It immediately soaked his pants and ran down his leg.
A low thrumming sound reverberated through the cavern. The blade moved to the other leg. Another cut. Another hiss. Another thrum of power. The chanting increased. Siralanna had joined in.
Quinitas flipped the blade, so the sharp side pointed up. We had been strapped in the boxes and hung six inches above the bottom. Quinitas slid the blade under the hob’s foot. Snick! Klaus whimpered. Blood pooled in the funnel at the bottom of the box and ran down the clay trough. The channel had a glaze that kept the clay from absorbing the liquid.
Quinitas cut Klaus’s other foot, and the whimper turned into a snarl. “I’m going to rip your fucking head off,” he shouted.
“That’s it,” Siralanna said. “Get angry. It makes the blood flow faster.”
Klaus closed his mouth and looked like he was trying to calm down.
Liz was next. Quinitas went through the same pattern of cutting her. She made no sound and didn’t flinch. She wouldn’t give Siralanna the pleasure. It was all I could do to keep from shouting out in empathy. Her strength kept me silent.
