Elminster in Hell tes-4

by Ed Greenwood

  I know that, you fool! I was bidding you answer me!

  Ah. Well, I was just sitting quiet, letting ye find thy own way.

  [raging growl] I'll break you, puny human!

  Ye did that already, and don't seem pleased with the result. With such wavering resolve, Nergal, how are ye ever going to rise to rule Hell?

  Don't mock me, elminster-unless you want to spend an eternity in torment.

  In many ways, devil, I already have. Think on that, and bluster less.

  [snarl, mind lash, bursting mind bolts, raw screams of agony, diabolic satisfaction, images whirling past like bright embers flung from a roaring fire]

  "Holy… dancing… hobgoblins," Asper said slowly, her voice unsteady.

  And who or what was that? El.-oh, never mind. I will make you pay for this, human. I swear by the- oho! It begins!

  ***

  Horns as tall as men thrust into the blood-red sky. Their cruel tips, curved slightly toward each other, were adorned with rows of charred spinagon skulls. The head beneath those horns might have belonged to a giant goat, and its large, sharp glistening black eyes bespoke fell, alert intelligence. It was a pity Harboring's face was also permanently lined with the pain given him by the Curse of Asmodeus.

  It was not a rare distinction in Hell to have earned the displeasure of the Lord Most Deep, but few wore the sign of it as a constant, active torment. The Horned One was the only one of those victims free to move about and pretend to even the tiniest shred of freedom. It was freedom laced with pain, the constant reminder Asmodeus desired it to be.

  Worms Harboring could not slay-for they were made of his own living guts-gnawed at him endlessly, burrowing in and out of his bulging belly. Streams of blood and foul fluids dripped ceaselessly from the wounds they made. Harboring's own talons and spells passed like smoke through the curseworms.

  Only commanded devils and captured beasts could strike the worms and slow the gnawing that daily weakened Harboring. As it was, only prodigious feeding and frantic seizing of magic by the goat-devil kept him alive. He knew Asmodeus watched him and gloated-wherefore his mood was seldom less than savage.

  Harboring was enjoying one of those "seldom" moments right now. He squatted atop a pinnacle slick with his own gore, tearing hungrily at the ribs of a dragon he'd spell-fooled into flying at full speed into the mountainside above. Thrice he'd had to fight off pit fiends seeking to claim its heart or brain-and he'd given up chasing away spinagons and abishai from spattered gobbets of dragon flesh and errant scales.

  This was the first large feast he'd had in days, and the Horned One was anticipating a serious interruption soon. The immobility of the dragon's huge carcass kept him in one spot to dine on it… and that meant foes could find him easily. Harhoring had prepared a few magics and was watching warily as he ate. In Hell, mistakes are luxuries one rarely survives.

  There! Something coming fast, rushing up without any attempt at stealth or subtlety, hurtling across Avernus like a dark, silent bolt of devil-flesh…

  Harhoring had keen eyes, and he used them now. This was an unfamiliar foe, or an old one wearing a guise he'd never seen before. Like a pit fiend, it seemed, but flew with its wings folded and drawn in behind it, as if it was an arrow shot from a bow. There was something strange about its body, too, as if it had many tiny legs, all constantly a-whirl around it___

  Harhoring favored the arriving foe with a toothy smile liberally adorned with raw, bloody dragon-and unleashed his first spell.

  Talons of acid sliced the air. The dripping latticework of death sizzled and spat as the foe struck it. A few scraps of armor, it seemed, caught the energy. They dwindled and tumbled as the acid ate through them.

  The onrushing foe seemed a human woman, clad more in her own hair than in anything else.That hair was long, as willful as the tentacles of a hunting squid. Those tresses held wands and rings and other items of magic… and even aimed them!

  Harboring's second magic slammed into her. The spell created stars of long thorns bristling in all directions, then caused them to explode, hurling their deadly shrapnel. The nearly bare woman writhed in her own blood, studded with dozens of javelinlike thorns, and fell through the air….

  Fires of the Pit! She was going to plunge into the still-steaming guts of the dragon! What if she lived and fought on-what would survive of Harboring's meal?

  With some alarm, but also with savage glee, the Horned One cast a bloodhook spell and pulled hard. The spell would snatch the human female-torn open and writhing in her death-agonies-to his feet.

  The hook plunged home. The woman threw back her head. Cords of straining flesh stood out in her throat. She screamed her pain at the blood-red sky. Then she seemed to leap across the space between them. Somewhere along the way, her helpless parabola became a pounce. Her face grew a grin to match Harboring's own.

  Magic flashed and flowed around the human sorceress as the two damned creatures came together. In sudden alarm, the Horned One belatedly conjured burning talons to augment the razor sharpness of his own.

  They were just swirling into existence as the foe smashed into his chest, her own hands glowing fiercely.

  Harhoring knew worse pain than anything he'd felt since the hand of Asmodeus himself. Red, shrieking agony! The Lord of Bones roared as his foe pierced him, and helplessly, convulsively, shoved her away to free himself-thereby winning greater pain.

  The woman's spell had briefly turned her hands into metal fauchard forks, each with a long point that stabbed deep into the goat-devil. A cruel hook below tore the gash wider. Her points drove deep-one piercing right through the devil's body.

  Shuddering and flailing, Harhoring spat flaming blood on her and wept more flames as he thrust her away. He pulled himself off her blades with frenzied, convulsive strength.

  Coolly she caught both hooks around his exposed intestines as she went. She fell away to one side, and the fury of his shove carried her on past the screaming devil. Her hold on her foe's guts jerked Harhoring sharply around.

  Squalling, the horned devil fell from the pinnacle, sprawling onto sharp rocks. Steaming innards tore themselves out of him in the fall. The curseworms reared and writhed in hungry agitation around his midriff.

  Thrashing on the rocks in arching, broken agony, the Horned One cursed the hand of Asmodeus, which prevented outcasts from summoning any devil to them and their service. By all the blood in Avernus, he needed aid now!

  With twin shimmerings, the woman's hands dwindled back to human form. She wrapped a loop of glistening devil guts around one forearm and began weaving another spell with her free hand.

  Harhoring wallowed on the rocks, trying to get upright despite the burning pain of broken bones. He needed to spin a desperate magic of his own.

  Harhoring offers little challenge, it seems. Hmmm. I'd thought him one of the strongest among us outcasts. Come, little wizard: it's time for you to see another corner of avernus.

  [mindworm fades to quiescence, casting commences, magic rising dark and strong]

  Blue-white fire raced along the goat-devil's guts, snarling on its swift journey from the grim and trembling human sorceress to the fallen, thrashing devil.

  "Where is he, devil?" the Simbul snapped. Death reached for the Lord of Bones. "What have you done with my man?"

  Puzzlement joined rage in the horned devil's eyes. It leveled a shuddering arm to point at her and unleash a last, desperate magic. The harsh word it said next was the beginning of an incantation, not an answer… but then her blood spell reached Harhoring.

  The explosion tore the horned devil apart, huge shoulders and all, drenching rocks all around.The Simbul stood, coated in dark ichor. Gore spattered down in a grisly rain that drowned out the sound of her sigh. The trace had laded. She was alone once more. Elminster was gone again, snatched away elsewhere in Avernus.

  "Someone wants a lot of devils slain," she said aloud, wearily. "Surely there are more efficient ways of doing that than throwing a lone human mage a
t them. Even this one."

  She looked down at her blood-drenched limbs. A few tiny fragments of armor were still whirling around them. The Simbul shook her head. With a careful spell she transformed the shards into dark wings.The slower way would have to suffice for the rest of this manhunt if her dwindling magic was to see her through another fray.

  "Time for Hell to tremble a little more," she murmured and leaped into the blood-red sky.

  ***

  Fiery eyes narrowed. "Saw you that?" a harsh voice rumbled.

  "Aye," the nearest pit fiend said."Another incursion that's more than it seems. No human sorceress should have been able to slay Orochal, let alone Tasnya the wanton and as deadly a hunter as Harhoring. Three gone to the flames where none should have fallen."

  "Indeed. Whelm our troops. Let there be fire in Avernus- and this human intruder writhing and pleading on my cooking-spit in its midst."

  ***

  "At your dread command," the pit fiend said, bowing its head. It took wing in ungainly, flapping haste. Good sport was not so common in Hell as to be willingly missed.

  A ball of flames gouted up from a brazier, with a roar as sudden and sharp as a gong. Horned heads turned.

  "Saw you?" asked a deep voice that made the floor tremble with its force, and the listeners with their fear.

  "Aye, Dread Lord," they hissed, more or less in chorus, reluctant and anxious.

  "To arms," the voice said simply. "Fail me not."

  Flames rolled up from the brazier more fiercely than ever before.There was a sudden tumult as devils scrambled to leave that trembling place.

  ***

  Well, well. Your witch-queen has snared more than a little attention in hell among the deep and powerful hosts wheimed, mighty magic taken out of hiding, nergal happy…

  Pet humans once more of service, hmm?

  Cleverness, cleverness! Always I'm treated to elminster being witty, elminster making mocking pronouncements, elminster saving the day with a sneer for the dolts he deals with! I could wrench you to bloody pulp in an instant, flames take you.'

  And yet ye don't. Why?

  Because no other devil in heu. Has a human in his hands who personali.y serves a goddess and holds any trifling measure of her power. Some deviis cajole or threaten or influence morals outside heu, but you're mine, body and mind. Obviously powerful and wise, and potentially very useful and yet i can't manage to learn anything useful from you. Yet.

  And-?

  and I won'twait much longer. You wiu yield m me, or die

  AS HORRIBLY AS I CAN CONTRIVE. that is, if malachlabra doesn't get you first.

  [unvoiced human query, mental eyebrow raised]

  On, yes. she survived our uttle battle over you, it seems,

  BUT HAS GOING INTO HIDING FOR FEAR OF Nl-RGAL THE MlGHTY… SO IT'S ONLY FfTTING THAT I GO TO HER. OR RATHER, SEND HER TWO LITTLE GIFTS. YOU AND YOUR AVENGING IADY LOVE.

  [rising bellow of diabolic laughter]

  Chapter Nineteen

  RAGE IN HELL

  The chaos of stagnant pools and jagged rocks around the pool of blood was alive with crawling maggots.Those rocks were also home to something else, something broken and shapeless, scorched dark, something that might have answered to the name Elminster if it had possessed a jaw to do so. He dared heal himself only very slowly. Maggots sucked and gnawed at him hungrily where he lay, motion-" less in the deep shadows.

  The dark thing splashing in the pool hadn't noticed Elminster's arrival. She was too busy spinning a spell of her own.

  It was a hovering sphere of bright, shifting glows and little chimings. In its depths, dark shapes quavered and broke, roiling like smoke.

  Its crafter hissed in annoyance. She frowned, feeding it more power through her long, hooked talons. "Work for Malachlabra," she breathed fiercely, peering into the depths. "Show me the human wizard-not my own cavern!"

  A rumbling sound echoed down stony passages to the pool. Anger kindled like red flames in ale-brown eyes. Malachlabra lifted her head and stared hard down the passage she'd used to reach this secret place--The passage was strewn with the gnawed bones of the dragon who'd dared to think it owned a fine lair here.

  The sound faded and came not again. With a growl the daughter of Dispater rolled over in the smoking blood of the pool and reclined on her belly, idly slapping the gore into little waves with her three serpent tails. She stared even j more intently into the depths of her spell-spun sphere.

  Shadows swirled in the heart of the sphere. Once more I it shaped jagged rocks and steaming blood-water, with a | long, sinuous obsidian form lying at ease in the pool, peering into-

  The magic burst in a shower of sparks, as all such weav-ings do when turned to look directly upon themselves. Malachlabra, Duchess of Hell and daughter of Dispater, reared back with a snarl.

  "Are my spells so feeble? Or is there something here, twisting my magic? The sphere of seeing has always worked before!"

  Bat wings flared once as she stretched restlessly. Sleek | obsidian flesh reared up from the hot blood of the pool. The thick red liquid dripped from high breasts, and ran down the curves where serpent-tails met in a wide pelvis. Malachlabra had the body of a lush human female, "| though for a woman, her snakelike, undulating neck would have been grotesquely long. The two horns curving up from her temples looked anything but human. Her forked tongue flickered thoughtfully between her lips, darting forth to taste the air, as she thought about how to get back at Nergal.

  Nergal the brute, stupid and always trusting overmuch in his power and cleverness. Nergal the spy, always slyly watching the doings of others, so as to pounce on this and manipulate that, thinking himself the rightful successor to Dread Asmodeus himself! Well, she'd-

  The thing that came rushing at Malachlabra out of the mouth of the passage gave no warning. It was barely a tail length away when it flared into a dozen bright blue bolts of ravening magic.

  The serpent devil had no time to try to see what had cast those bolts. They shocked into her, spreading their own cold, cutting pain. Spell-plucked rocks smashed into her from behind, driving her down into the pool and drowning her sight.

  Desperately she lashed the air with all her tails, slapping hard at unseen nothing, and was rewarded with a heavy, thudding impact.

  Fires of Nessus, but the pain was intense! Shaking, Malachlabra surfaced with talons at the ready, seeking-

  Anything but what she saw: a human sorceress with crude bat wings crumpled around her, standing amid the bloody rocks. Her hands racing in intricate gestures." I feel him!" the woman hissed, her eyes blazing."What have you done with him, devil?"

  This intruder did not wait for a reply. The spell she'd spun burst into another volley of blue bolts that sprang into the she-devil.

  Screaming amid white fire, Malachlabra twisted and arched. She fought to weave magic of her own and sobbed with unaccustomed pain by the time it worked-snatching her elsewhere.

  In midgasp she was back on the smoking, spinagon-swarming surface of Avernus, not far from the cavern she'd just fled. Shuddering, she thrust aside hate and pain and tried to think how best to smite this astonishing foe. How had a human even reached her-?

  The third volley of magic missiles left the serpent-devil on her face on the rocks, clinging to life and awareness through a red haze.

  "We weren't done yet, devil," she heard the human say angrily from behind her. "Or at least I wasn't."

  The blade that pierced the base of Malachlabra's skull — j was very cold and hard. It slid through her and out her fj nose before she could even shriek, pinning her jaws half- | open, and struck a spark off a stone in front of her.

  Summoning all her will and power, the devil threw her J awareness into that spark and rode it away,…

  "Die, devil!" Alassra Silverhand hissed.

  The Simbul's spell sword melted out of her hands, leaving its own fiery pain behind. She flung herself back asij flames roared up in a thunderous column, shaking the stony ground. Heat forc
ed the Simbul a few hasty paces:1 farther away.

  The serpent-devil's limp body withered and writhed at its heart. It shrank and faded away.

  Another column of fire burst into being behind her, Jj melting the tip of one of her wings.The Simbul gasped at the pain. She whirled to face this new peril and hastily murmured the words that would make her wings pass | out of existence.

  "Look up, human, before you die," came a cold command.

  For once, the queen of Aglarond obeyed.

  A pit fiend larger than any she'd ever seen before hung in the red air high above her, flanked by two others. In the distance, flights of erinyes were flapping nearer. A series of smoking explosions occurred on rocks all around as summoned barbed devils appeared. They strode, grinning cruelty at her as they advanced. One of.J them seemed in distress, convulsing and growing as it came. Its legs lengthened into three serpent tails. Its body 'J became taller and more shapely….

  Another column of flame burst into being and roared skyward, ringing the Simbul. Over the lip of the dell in which she stood, a pale, glistening army appeared: a moaning wave of goggle-eyed, shapeless fleshy things, Lemures, the mindless, maggot-like living refuse of Hell. Terror was written on their empty faces, but their eyes held only darkness. They reached with misshapen arms toward her. Whips cracked over them, and abishai overseers peered eagerly at the lone human in the midst of the flames.

  Slowly, the Simbul's wings sighed into nothingness. She went to her knees on the hard rocks, crossing her wrists in the gesture of surrender into slavery.

  "Well, well," the pit fiend said softly,"this is going to be easier than I'd thought. Stay just as you are, human, while I chain you."

  Minute sparks burst into being between the Simbul's wrists, where the metal scales embedded in her skin touched. She'd transformed her bracers into them after destroying Tasnya, and thrust the last few powers of her scorched garments into them. Now it was time to call on their true powers, one of the mightiest magics she'd ever crafted.