Pool of Twilight hop-3

by James M. Ward

  Listle stared in surprise. She hadn't expected her spell to affect all of them! She was no expert on the art of summoning-illusion was her preferred school of magic-but she remembered that a group of fiends called into the world through a single spell were inextricably linked. She hadn't realized how deep that nexus ran. Not that she felt like complaining.

  The fiends turned on each other, and in less than a minute all of them were dead. They'd torn each other to pieces trying to combat foes that didn't really exist.

  "And some people think illusionists aren't worth anything in battle," Listle said with a sniff.

  The remaining black-armored warriors were quickly dispatched by the clerics. Disheartened by the grisly spectacle of the dying fiends and by the apparent desertion of their leader, Slayer, the last warriors did not put up much of a fight.

  But the threat was not over.

  "A foe in the temple!" came a shout from within. Recognizing the voice as Tarl's, Kern and Listle rushed into the temple behind Anton and Rialad. Inside, they found the blind cleric guarding the table that held the magically warded Oracle of Strife and swinging his hammer at a foe only he could see. Two clerics lay dead before him, victims of the invisible enemy.

  "Show yourself, coward!" Tarl growled. "Your enchantments won't hide you from me."

  Suddenly a shadow form materialized before the white-haired cleric. It was the huge abishai, Slayer.

  "Out of my way, weakling cleric of Tyr," the fiend snarled. "The Oracle is mine."

  "On my honor, you are wrong on that count," Sir Rialad cried, leaping forward. With a snarl, Slayer conjured a crimson ball of flame, hurling it at the brave paladin. It burst against Rialad's breastplate, covering him with searing fire. Howling as his flesh began to singe and wither, Sir Rialad sank to his knees.

  Kern moved to counterattack, but a fierce look from Slayer stopped him in his tracks.

  "One step closer, and this fool cleric is the next to go up in flames." The fiend was pointing a gleaming talon at Tarl. The white-haired cleric abruptly froze, unable to move, magically bound by chains no one could see.

  Kern halted, unsure what to do.

  "The Oracle is mine," Slayer hissed, reaching out for the tome.

  "By Tyr, you will not have it!" a hoarse voice croaked.

  Sir Rialad, his flesh dark and cracked, lurched forward and fell onto the table, clutching The Oracle of Strife to his still-burning chest. Crimson fire licked at the ancient parchment, then flared, consuming book and paladin together in a gout of flame.

  Slayer screamed in outrage and spun around, only to be blocked by Kern's hammer. The paladin-aspirant stood protectively in front of his father.

  "You've lost, fiend," Kern growled, amazed at the steel he heard in his own voice.

  "You don't know who you're dealing with, cub!" the fiend shrieked, beating its leathery wings.

  "I don't care who-or what-you are!" Kern shouted. For a moment he forgot that he was only a paladin-aspirant. With a fierce battle cry, he swung his hammer in a bone-crushing arc.

  The fiend reached out and grabbed the weapon, jerking Kern's arms to a halt. The young man tried to yank the hammer free, but all his strength was nothing against the monster.

  "You think you have won, but you are mistaken, Hammerseeker," the fiend hissed. "You have gained a little time, that is all. One day soon, my mistress will own you. Of that you can be certain."

  Slayer's hand glowed a blistering red. The head of Kern's battlehammer shone white-hot in the fiend's grip, then melted. Molten fire splashed against Kern's gauntlets as he quickly dropped the hammer's haft.

  The monstrous abishai spoke a guttural word of magic. There was a clap of thunder, and the fiend vanished in a cloud of thick, foul-smelling smoke. Gradually the acrid haze dissipated. The monster called Slayer was gone.

  "I don't know, Kern," Listle said wryly, "but something tells me you didn't make any friends today."

  4

  Perilous Summonings

  "Why, by all the bloodiest gods, must I always endure such fools around me?"

  A bolt of magic streaked from Sirana's fingertips. It ricocheted wildly around her circular spellcasting chamber, deep in the subterranean warrens of the thieves' guild, pulverizing priceless sculptures and blasting antique furniture to ashes before finally dissipating against the porphyry walls.

  "How could they lose?" Sirana shrieked, her hands clenched into fists. But no human being could answer her. The last three thieves who had entered her chamber were now scuttling around the floor in the form of cockroaches, doing their best to avoid being crushed by her boot heels. "How could they have lost to a band of doddering holy men? All that blasted abishai had to do was bring back an old book and a foolish boy!"

  Sirana caught a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror of polished bronze. She liked what she saw-a tall, shapely woman with dark hair and smoldering eyes, clad in a thin white shift belted by a heavy braid of gold. Yes, she thought, even in her rage she looked supremely beautiful. She enjoyed this human form she had taken. Not a hint of her fiendish heritage showed beneath the sultry, feminine exterior.

  She sank into an ornately carved chair-one of the few items in the room that had escaped her magical wrath- and bit delicately on a knuckle. It was time to put rage aside and calculate a new course of action. Revenge was best planned with a cool head. Sirana knew that well. After all, she had made revenge her specialty.

  It was obvious that a direct attack on the clerics of Tyr would not avail her. She had spent months taking over Phlan's thieves' guild, perverting it to suit her purposes. Then she had summoned Slayer to be her servant. Slayer was a baatezu abishai, a magical creature of fearsome power, but he had failed miserably. No matter the armored horde of thieves and the pack of feral spinagons she had sent to help him.

  She picked up a small black-lacquered box from a table beside the chair. It was her most precious possession, a gift from her beloved mother on the day Sirana had murdered the old crone. It was a box full of magical memories. Carefully, Sirana opened the lid. Gradually an image began to form in the darkness within.

  An image of a lofty tower, hewn of crimson stone.

  Though Sirana had never gazed upon the tower with her own eyes, it was nonetheless a familiar sight to her. The tower had belonged to her father, Lord Marcus, a powerful Red Wizard from the eastern land of Thay. Once it had been a citadel of awesome power built above a legendary pool of darkness. Marcus had managed to imprison the entire city of Phlan in a cavern underneath the tower, intending to drain the life-forces of the citizens in order to transform himself into a demigod.

  "But it was all for nothing," Sirana whispered mournfully. "If only I could have been there to help."

  She watched as history replayed in the images of the black box. She saw the defilers come to the tower: a ranger, a sorceress, a barbarian who could assume the form of a great cat, and finally the one who always sent a shiver of fear through her-a skeletal paladin, his empty eye sockets glowing with horrible, holy blue light. The undead paladin had been the cause of her father's demise, and for that she despised him most of all. The paladin had turned to dust at the end of the battle, so he was beyond the reach of revenge. But the others were not.

  She watched as the tiny tower inside the black box began to topple and fall. She watched as the invaders fled the scene of destruction. For long moments, the images were still. Nothing moved. Then Sirana could glimpse her mother, the beautiful, fiendish erinyes who had served the human, Lord Marcus, crawl from the ruins, bleeding, wings twisted and broken, yet alive.

  The erinyes had given birth to Sirana not long after the defeat at the red tower. Because of her half-fiendish blood, Sirana had grown quickly. Early on, her mother had sown the seeds of enmity in Sirana's heart, teaching her everything about the powers of darkness that might be useful one day to hunt those who had killed Marcus and injured the erinyes. When Sirana was nine, she had tested her daughter's progress in a magical duel. In the cour
se of the battle, Sirana had slain her mother, gaining the erinyes's power for her own. Neither regretted the outcome of the duel. Even as she lay dying, the erinyes had presented the memory box to Sirana and made her take a vow of vengeance.

  For years, Sirana had bided her time, waiting for the perfect moment to enact her revenge. And then a wondrous opportunity had presented itself. She discovered a fantastic new source of power that made her stronger than she had ever dared to hope. A plan unfurled in her mind. Not only would she kill those who had slain her father, she would also regain the precious Hammer of Tyr the city held so dear. Without the hammer, Phlan would never be healed of the vice and corruption that had come to plague it since the hammer was lost. Then she would ransom the hammer to one of the many dark gods who despised Tyr. In exchange for the relic, she would demand to become a demigod, just as Marcus himself, her father, had once dreamed. Her vengeance, and her destiny, would be complete.

  The iron door of her spellcasting chamber flew open with a boom, shattering her pleasant reverie. She scowled, snapping shut the memory box. A cruel light shone in her dark eyes. Yes, she would have her revenge, and she would become a deity. This minor setback at the temple meant nothing at all. But first she had some tedious business to take care of.

  "We have dealt the imbecile clerics of Tyr a blow they will not soon forget, Sirana!" a voice thundered.

  Slayer. The abishai strutted into her chamber, displaying dagger-sharp fangs. Several roaches scuttled about in terror. Unlike Slayer, they possessed an inkling of what was going to happen.

  The massive fiend stood before Sirana's chair, breath reeking, the veins in its membranous wings pulsing with black blood.

  "It was a glorious battle," Slayer snarled arrogantly. "The morons of Tyr will never stand another assault."

  "Is that so?" Sirana crooned. "And what do we have left to assault them with, Slayer? An army of cockroaches?" She flung a small crimson ball of energy at one of the insects crawling by. When the smoke cleared, all that remained was a scorched spot on the stone floor.

  Slayer shrugged massive shoulders. "They couldn't prove any worse in battle than your spinagons, mistress. Not that your army of thieves was much better. Despite their ineptitude, I almost got my hands on The Oracle of Strife. Then a blasted paladin I had set ablaze had the gall to collapse on the book. It was ashes before I could blink. Your idiot spinagons should have stopped him, but they had all perished at the hands of an elven illusionist." The fiend's scarlet eyes glowed hotly. "You didn't tell me there would be a mage in the temple, mistress. Tch, tch! You should be grateful I am still alive to serve you."

  A smile coiled itself about Sirana's lips like a small ruby serpent. "Indeed, abishai, I am exceedingly grateful. And I feel I should grant you a reward for your accomplishments."

  She lifted a hand. Slayer's eyes flared suspiciously. Black flames encircled the fiend's body. Layer after layer of magical protections wove themselves about the abishai. The fiend glared at its mistress smugly. It had nothing to fear from the half-breed daughter of a lowly erinyes.

  "You dare to raise a hand against me?" Slayer snarled. Drool flew from the abishai's maw, pitting the stone floor where it splattered. "I am a prince among fiends. Your mother's kind are insects to me, and your father's most powerful spells could not so much have scratched my defenses. You summoned me into this world, Sirana, but do not for a moment believe that you will be able to hurt me."

  Sirana feigned an impressed look. "I have misjudged you, great abishai," she simpered. She fell to her knees before the fiend's clawed feet, bowing her head submissively. "Truly I am not worthy of being called mistress by one so mighty as yourself."

  Slayer let out a deep, rumbling laugh. "Well, this is more appropriate, erinyes-spawn."

  Abruptly Sirana stood up, a vicious smile on her beautiful face. Slayer stared at her, too late noticing the rune she had drawn upon the floor while she knelt.

  The rune spewed forth a white-hot funnel of sparks.

  "What is this?" the abishai hissed as the sparks covered its body. The fiend tried to bat them away, but the sparks seared its scaly flesh with pain wherever they touched. Black flames flared to protect Slayer, but the sparks sent by Sirana spun faster and faster. The abishai's aura of protection shattered.

  "No!" Slayer screamed. "This cannot be!"

  Sirana watched as the sparks adhered to Slayer's skin. They covered the fiend, consumed it.

  "But I am a prince of fiends!"

  The abishai writhed like a skewered lizard, its entire form burning with magic, its body lost in the maelstrom of sparks. The tornadolike magic whirled faster and faster. Then Slayer began to shrink, melting into the rune on the floor. One last wail of fury echoed around the chamber, then the tornado was sucked down into the rune that had spawned it.

  The magical symbol shimmered with power. Sirana did not hesitate. She knelt down, pressing her forehead against the rune.

  Searing heat shot through her skull, but before she could scream it faded to a dull, almost pleasant tingling. Sirana stood, new power surging through her veins. The rune on the floor had vanished, but a mirror image of the symbol glowed momentarily on her pale forehead. Then it, too, faded. All the power that had been Slayer's was now hers to command.

  She stretched luxuriously, then sank onto a velvet covered chaise, reveling in her victory over the abishai. A month ago such a conquest would have been beyond her abilities. But not now. Every day she grew stronger. Her destiny beckoned.

  True, The Oracle of Strife had been destroyed, but the riddle of the hammer's hiding place had apparently been solved, or the clerics of Tyr would never have allowed the book to go up in flames. Sirana would find other ways of obtaining her prize. It would be simple enough to find the hammer by following those sent to fetch it, and Sirana's otherworldly spies had already informed her that the son of two of her father's killers would be among them.

  She tossed her head back and laughed, a high, trilling sound that echoed off the cold stone walls. She was a highly creative fiend, after all. She was certain she would think of something.

  Raising her hand, she gently stroked a braided ring fashioned from the coarse hair of some monster. "Hoag, I summon you. Come to me."

  Instantly, a creature materialized high above her. The hamatula, a baatezu of the Nine Hells, was a tall, long-limbed fiend covered from head to claw with cruelly barbed spikes. The hamatula were cousins of the abishai and erinyes, but after her experience with Slayer, Sirana found that she preferred the cruel and crafty hamatula to the brutish and arrogant abishai. Hoag had served her well in the past. She should have thought to summon this particular fiend earlier.

  "Sirana," the fiend growled with pleasure. "How wonderful it is to be summoned by a wizard of your eminence once again."

  It bowed low, its long, spindly limbs strangely graceful. Its exquisitely sharp talons brushed the stone floor, tracing fine lines in the hard stone. "What task may I perform for you, mistress?"

  "I need you to help me with a little plot I've concocted, Hoag," Sirana said liltingly. She ran a finger lightly along one of the hamatula's razor-edged barbs. "Of course, I can't have you walking around the city of Phlan looking like this."

  The sorceress waved her hand. Shadows drifted down to swirl about the hamatula. When the shadows dispersed, the spider-limbed fiend was gone, and in its place stood a tall knight of noble bearing clad in ornate armor of midnight black. He bore a sable shield without device or crest. His face was concealed behind the visor of his helm.

  "That's better." Sirana, deep in thought, chewed her lower lip delicately. "Of course, a good knight needs a proper steed." She waved her hand again. This time the shadows coalesced to form a glossy, jet-black charger. Its scarlet nostrils flared as it snorted, tossing its shadowy mane.

  "Now, listen carefully at what you are to do, Hoag."

  The tall knight nodded his head. "It is with the greatest pleasure that I serve, my dark lady."

  Sirana
was resting in her chamber after sending Hoag off on his errand, lost in daydreams of power and vengeance and on the verge of drifting into an exquisite slumber.

  Suddenly, she felt hostile energy attack the intricate tapestry of warding enchantments she had woven around her spellcasting chamber. Her smoldering eyes flew open, and she leaped to her feet.

  I will not be ignored!

  The voice seemed to roar in her mind, ancient and powerful. It came to her across a vast distance, but Sirana reeled beneath its thunderous force all the same.

  Release me, wizard!

  She could feel the enchantments that cocooned her chamber waver. Fear clutched at her heart, and she cursed herself inwardly. She should have been expecting some onslaught.

  Release me now!

  A terrible blast of pure energy shredded the last of the chamber's defenses, knocking Sirana to her knees. Fighting panic, she did her best to absorb the virulent forces. To her amazement, she found the will to resist.

  She staggered to her feet. This morning such an attack would have burnt her to cinders. She must have usurped more power from Slayer than she had imagined. Her far-off foe would not get another chance to strike. Closing her eyes, she launched a barrage of her own against her unseen assailant. She was rewarded by a howl of pain that she heard mentally. That would buy her a little time.

  With a single word of magic, Sirana propelled her spirit from her body. She had learned to travel astrally from her mother, and nowadays did it as if it were second nature. She seemed to rise up through the ceiling, then high into the sky above, all the while trailing a twisted silver thread that kept her spirit in contact with the corporeal form that remained behind in her subterranean chamber.

  The land rushed by in a blur beneath her. In moments, she approached a line of high, knife-edged peaks: the Dragonspine Mountains. She plunged down into a chasm of darkness. In less than an eyeblink, her spirit journey ended.