Running with blood, Jus shook his head and parried a lethal lunge aimed straight at his eye. He blocked the blow one-handed, ramming the heel of his fist up into the erinyes’ chin. His enemy rocked, and the Justicar’s black sword whipped to tear great slashes across her hide.
The erinyes’ wounds closed instantly, each one diminishing the haze of stolen energy. As she stabbed at him, Jus roared and made a killing thrust, ramming his sword into the devil’s heart. He viciously twisted the blade like a corkscrew, and the erinyes screeched in torment on his hook. She ripped free, the black life-force from the sword hissing into the wound. The energy flickered out and died. Only half-healed, the erinyes’ breast ran with blood.
Panting, the erinyes bared her fangs. She clutched her wound and slowly backed away. With a malicious hiss, she flicked up her hand. A brilliant flash of magic flooded from a ring upon the creature’s hand.
Nine identical erinyes suddenly made a circle about the Justicar, all of them running sideways in a hellish carousel. Nine mouths laughed, and nine Blackrazors whirled. She sped around and around the Justicar, Blackrazor glittering in a stream of deadly stars.
Surrounded by screaming death, the Justicar stood his ground and tried to pick his enemy amongst the ring of illusions.
“Cinders, which one is she?”
Can’t tell! The hell hound twitched, trying to focus on the swirling images. Moves too fast!
The erinyes laughed like a woman winning trophies at a fair.
“Time to die, Justicar!” A peal of mirth rose into the air. “I’ll get you! And your little dog too!”
From the corridor, Escalla tried to drag herself forward.
“Jus! Jus, hold her off! I’m coming!” The little faerie tried to drag herself forward, her bandages wet with blood. “Jus, I’m coming!”
The ring of devils raced faster and faster, coming closer to the Justicar. The erinyes gave a cry of joy—then halted as she saw the Justicar bow his head and close his eyes.
Freezing in place, the erinyes stared in amazement. The ranger stood with his blade on guard, his stance spread, and his breathing deliberately slow and calm. With his eyes closed, he left himself open to attack. The devil-woman faltered in surprise, then gave a wild, triumphant cry. She swirled like a mad dancer, and then the entire ring of images lunged inward for the kill, nine soul-swords raised to smash the human to the ground.
Cinders’ ears twitched. Moving with vicious speed, Jus whipped his blade up behind his back and caught the real Blackrazor as it came scything at his spine. The man spun, his sword blurring forward in a lunge. With a horrific sound, it rammed into the monster’s flesh and nine erinyes images screamed in horror as they were run through the heart.
Eight images flashed and disappeared, leaving the Justicar’s enemy impaled on his blade. The Justicar twisted his sword, ripped it free, then brought the weapon down in one enormous blow. He hacked the screaming devil in two, his blade scything down to clang against the stone floor. With blood exploding from her flesh, the erinyes fell in two twitching halves, her last scream echoing as Blackrazor fell impotent against the ground.
Breathing hard, Jus slowly lowered his sword. Blood ran from his back, waist, arms, and thighs. He knelt and wiped his blade clean in his dead foe’s hair, then grimly slammed the blade back in its sheath.
Back in the corridor, Escalla panted with pain. Her eyes fell on the glittering rubbish left behind in the erinyes’ retreat. Amidst the rubies that had fallen from the erinyes’ waist, there lay a potion flask. Escalla uncorked the thing, sniffed at it, then drank. She threw the empty bottle away, then felt Polk scuttling forward to lift her to her feet. The teamster carried her into the monster room, where both he and the faerie stared at the Justicar standing amidst the horrific remains of his foe.
Polk gaped at the ranger, thoroughly amazed.
“You did it.” Surveying the damage, the teamster set his cap back on his head. “Son, you can swordfight! I never saw nothing like it in my life!”
Jus felt at the blood running from his wounds and gave an irritated scowl.
“I told you: If they can hit back, you’re doing something wrong.”
He reached for the faerie. Escalla clenched a bloody hand against her bandages and reached out to climb into the Justicar’s arms. She shook her head in disbelief as she gazed about the room.
“Then that’s it. We did it! That’s all three weapons found.” The faerie blinked in a daze. “We beat White Plume Mountain.”
With a roar of laughter, a voice flooded into the room from above.
“All three weapons! Well done, little insects. Well done indeed!”
A crash of magic flooded the room, and an unseen fist clamped about Escalla and the Justicar. Polk screeched and tried to jab the trident at something, only to stagger and fall as a spell put him to sleep.
A huge image hovered above the monster pen—a human face painted in complex patterns of black and white. The librarian of Trigol laughed and squeezed his victims inside a gigantic magic fist, lifting them slowly into the air.
“Two survivors. Or is it three?” The librarian shouted out a spell. A glowing circular portal opened, and two of his assistants stepped through to lift Polk up from the floor. “Come along, then! It’s high time we showed you exactly why you are here!”
The fallen magical weapons were collected and brought into the magic gate. An instant later, Jus and Escalla were drawn through into the glowing hole and the entire universe seemed to explode with light.
In a vast chasm lit by blood-red light, the molten heart of White Plume Mountain roared. High above, the chasm soared into a ceiling vaulted by the world’s own bones. Hundreds of feet down below, a huge lake of magma roiled. From this molten blood of the earth, five giant columns of transparent crystal soared upward, thrusting aloft a platform high in the air. Fields of force shielded the platform from the raw heat of the lava, the planes shimmering as energy ebbed and flowed into the air.
Power crackled from the crystal columns, arcing like lightning bolts against the chasm walls. The heads of the columns emerged through the platform floor, each one forming one point of a gigantic pentagram painted in congealed human blood. Power arced from the columns and into pathways gouged into the floor. The chasm shuddered and echoed to the forces gathering deep inside the mountain’s bowels.
All the power, all the force, fed into a single, brilliant point. The center of the giant pentagram held a long, open trough of clear glass. Inside the trough, a human skeleton lay wreathed with power. Tendrils of flesh were creeping ever so slowly to wrap the bones. At each point of the pentagram, a heavy stone table equipped with manacles gleamed evilly in the light. Branches of power crept from the pentagram to lick over the dangling chains before pulsing and flowing back to the trough with its obscene skeleton.
The transparent platform of force hung above the lava lake. Suspended above the magma, the floor shimmered in the lightning light. Trapped inside a small hemisphere with invisible walls, the Justicar stirred slowly and painfully awake, his head still thudding from the agony of a stun spell.
The prisons ceiling was too low. Jus had to hunch over to fit his head beneath the surface of the invisible dome. The big man discovered Escalla and Polk lying at his feet. He gently picked up the faerie—small, frail, and swathed in bloody bandages—and cradled her in his arms as he took stock of the scene outside his cage.
A tangled pile of equipment lay carelessly beside the pentagram. Two black swords, one shimmering slightly from the pinpoint lights of a myriad of stars, joined a trident and a hammer. Thrown about, almost as an afterthought, were their backpacks and the erinyes’ magic rope. Cinders lay draped upside down over it all like a throw rug, the light in his eyes gleaming slyly. Jus met the hell hound’s gaze, nodded, and felt the cunning hound hiss slightly in reply.
Far below the transparent floor, lava bubbled. A brilliant coil of power lanced up from the crystal columns and out into the pentagram. The hide
ous skeleton in the trough took on glistening new flesh, sucking obscenely on the energy that crawled across the floor.
The volcano shuddered as magma welled into the fire lake far below. Here and there, a few flecks of fallen rock passed through the screen that shielded the open platform from the heat. The rock chips spattered to the floor like a brittle rain.
The noise of bubbling lava made the platform shiver. Escalla stirred and sat up, rubbing at the side of her skull. She worked a bad taste out of her mouth and looked around at the volcanic chamber.
The faerie sighed and rested a hand against her wounds. “I guess we passed the librarian’s test, huh?”
“Looks like it.”
“Jus? If you had a great plan for this moment, this is a good time to clue me in.”
“I have one.” The big man remained calculating and calm. “But I need to get free and get close to the librarian.”
“Oh, great.” Escalla craned her neck to see the skeleton trough and its surrounding array of torture tables. “Oh, I really like the look of that. Gotta admire a host who really knows how to entertain.”
Jus pointed to the skeleton trough with his chin. “Keraptis?”
“Cloned from his own hair strands.” Escalla looked carefully at the pentagram arrangement, the crystal columns, and the ring of tables with their manacles. Blood-red magma light made the very air seem to boil. “This stuff is all really major magical construct. This must be Keraptis’ old haunts beneath the mountain.” The girl tilted her slanted eyes, her intelligence sharp as a razor. “Those torture tables are new, though. See—it’s all new-sawn wood.”
The Justicar carefully put Escalla down on the transparent floor. She sat there with lava bubbling two hundred feet below her bottom while the Justicar stood and pressed his hands against the ceiling of his prison. He rapped the dome with his knuckles, raising his eyebrows as it gave off a metallic clang.
Escalla winced as she touched her bandages.
“So what—are they going to do human sacrifices to get the power to raise this mage?”
“It might be worse than that.” The Justicar carefully traced the join of the prison’s walls to the floor. The dome felt cold and hard. The floor seemed to be a living, pulsing slab of pure force. “They set this labyrinth up deliberately to kill the weak but let a few heroes through.”
The faerie cocked an eye. “You’re saying we’re heroes?”
“No, I’m saying the maze is actually a filter.” The Justicar seemed satisfied with his examination of the prison. “Polk, wake up.”
The teamster came suddenly awake and sat up, eyes wide open and his head spinning. “I’m up, son! I’m up!”
“Good. We’re leaving.”
The Justicar took a quick look over the open platform above the lava. The place still seemed utterly devoid of life, “We’re in Keraptis’ laboratories now. They won’t expect us to get free. We’ll get into the mountain and hunt the librarian down on our own terms.”
Escalla gave an elegant gesture to indicate the little dome that held them prisoner. “And this jail-thingie we’re in? What? Did you find a key?”
Jus sniffed. “It’s not part of the original room. It’s not a force field. It’s magical steel. It rings when you rap it with your knuckles.” The big man planted his shoulders against the ceiling. “They even put in some air holes! I think it’s just resting on the floor.”
Both the teamster and the faerie looked around as if they could somehow test the truth of the Justicar’s words.
Jus braced himself. “I’ll lift it. You two get out, get my sword, and use it to prop up the dome so I can escape.”
“Gotcha!” The faerie instantly ran over to the edge of the prison, then turned and looked at Jus with a dubious eye. “You’re really going to be able to lift this thing?”
Jus never answered. He planted his body beneath the invisible prison dome and took the weight upon his shoulders. He shot the faerie a rare smile—full of shared pleasure—and slowly began to stand.
With a noise like the lid being raised upon a cooking pot, the dome slowly began to lift. Escalla probed at the edge of the invisible prison, felt a gap beginning to open, and slid beneath the edge and into the open air. She stood, brushing roughly at her bandages, and grinned with feral delight at her friend the Justicar.
“Oh, man! You can be my hero anytime!”
She spread her wings and turned toward the equipment pile. “Polk? Come on, man. I need you to lift the sword!”
Polk stared at the Justicar in absolute approval and total joy. Slapping his hands together in satisfaction, he backed away and wriggled beneath the invisible dome. Escalla caught the teamster by the hand, and they both ran side by side toward the welcoming grin of Cinders.
A sudden huge blow lifted Escalla up into the air, crushing her inside a giant fist. Polk fell skidding on the floor, knocked almost senseless by the massive ghostly hand that snatched itself about Escalla’s body.
A second fist lifted up the invisible prison dome, cast it aside, then snatched up the Justicar as well. The huge fists trailed tendrils of force, magical links running back toward the cavern mouth that led into the mountain.
Walking coolly through the portal came the librarian. His two acolytes followed at his back. The man lifted his hands and squeezed. The ghostly fists copied the motion, making Escalla croak with pain as she and the Justicar were held dangling like toys.
“A superior man proves his superiority by leaving nothing to chance.” The librarian cast a brief glance toward the faint shimmer of the overturned prison dome.
“You were right. It was glass steel. You made an impressive show of deduction, a good display of physical force.” The librarian turned his fists as he finally walked onto the vast, invisible platform. He examined the Justicar like an imprisoned insect in his grasp. “It will be interesting to discover what you do and how you do it. The erinyes was a poor match. She lacked your cunning.” The librarian thoughtfully turned the Justicar this way and that. “A very useful cunning…”
The librarian nodded to his acolytes, and both men immediately walked over to the tables at the edges of the pentagram. Manacles were unclasped and chains attached. One table was conspicuously adjusted to hold a victim of faerie-size.
Polk sat up, blinking. He sat beside the pile of abandoned equipment, looked dazedly at Cinders where the hell hound lay draped across his backpack, then the teamster finally seemed to see the librarian and his acolytes.
The sorcerers went about their business as a plume of lava hissed upward from the pool far below. Staring at the librarian, Polk changed colors, from pale white to bright red with fury.
“Good triumphs over evil!” The teamster puffed up like a frog, utterly incensed. “You may think you’ve got us, but you’ve lost!”
“Ah, the insect speaks.” The librarian was carefully inspecting the skeleton inside the trough. Muscle fibres coiled wetly about the bones while power surged up through the mighty pillars that held the force platform up out of the mountain’s molten heart. “I was never in a contest, little man. Therefore I cannot lose.” Still holding his two prisoners in his ghostly fists, the librarian carefully observed his acolytes making adjustments to their equipment. “I have no time for selecting worthy donors, so we let the labyrinth perform our selection process for us. The trap was baited, set, and sprung. The rewards”—the librarian looked closer at the half-formed body deep inside its tank—“the rewards are about to be achieved.”
Jus looked at Escalla. He needed time. He needed to find a way to break free. The girl read his intention. She blew out a big breath, engaged her enthusiasm, and suddenly made a mocking, raucous laugh.
The noise turned the heads of librarian, the assistants—and even Polk as the girl made a flippant little sneer. “Trap? Trap? Ha! You blew it!” The faerie wriggled inside the giant fist of force. “We got hold of all the weapons!”
“The weapons were always where I wanted them to be.” The librari
an sniffed. “Simple enough to seize them again at need. Until then, they form an admirable part of the sifting process.”
“But we killed all your little pet monsters!”
“Then we will use a spell to summon some more.” The librarian seemed finished with his work at the tank and turned to look at the Justicar and Escalla. “The two of you make a promising start. There will be others—hopefully better. We shall examine ways of snaring tougher prey.”
Polk sat, frozen. The librarian’s two assistants both cast glances up at their master’s victims and then stood carefully over to one side. Behind them, the giant pentagram glowed with force, magical pathways rippling as energy flowed up into the transparent coffin. Strand by strand the body in the trough rebuilt itself, the muscle strands shining sticky-wet beneath the flickering light.
Hanging in midair, Escalla cast a glance into the magic trough and insolently blew a strand of hair back from her eyes. “So this is the triumph you’re wasting your time on? All you did was clone some old wizard from his hair strands?”
“This is Keraptis!” With his assistants still busy at their chores, the librarian suddenly had time to educate lesser entities. He turned his back to the abyss and walked beneath his two victims. “A most unusual being. Did you know his structure was physically different from other men? He visited the plane of limbo and reshaped himself, allowing himself to store more magical energy that is normally possible for a mortal frame!”
Escalla gave a mocking shrug. “Whoopie! So now you’re gonna collect a reward from the guy when he comes awake.” The faerie let her antenna make a sarcastic little droop. “This is a new plan.”
Lava shuddered far below, and a tongue of flame shot skyward past the force platform. Curtains of energy at the platforms sides kept away the heat, yet allowed a few pieces of pumice ash to land streaming and hissing beside the pentagram.
White Plume Mountain Page 27
