by Ed Greenwood
Mirt scowled at her, eyes gleaming like two old torches. He tried, and failed, to shake off her grip. Her fingers were like claws. “Aye, true enough—and with Khelben and Laeral gone off the gods alone know where, that leaves me just one weapon swift to my hand that’s sharp enough to hew down devils.”
Asper’s face was wet with tears. “What?”
Mirt set his jaw, freed himself from her hand, and strode toward the stairs, hefting his sword. “Halaster Blackcloak. I have to find him, down in Undermountain, and—ha—convince him to fight his way into Hell and bring Elminster back here to me. Without delay, so he might just still be alive when Halaster gets there.” He chuckled, a dry, terrible sound.
“Mirt, no!” Asper almost screamed. She gnawed at her knuckles and sobbed. “You can’t! He’s mad! You—”
“—Have to,” he finished her sentence for her, softly. “For—live or die this night—if I fail my best and oldest friends, what am I? And what have I lived for?”
Eleven
OLD DEVILS, NEW TRICKS
Bare, thorny branches of stunted trees stabbed like despairing fingers into the blood-red sky. Elminster Aumar sighed at them. Well, at least he could move, seeing new sights on the probably short remainder of his journey toward death. Such mobility afforded him a deep and abiding consolation, of course.
El crawled forward on raw, bleeding knees, his body bristling with greasy, green-black spines that he hoped looked half as unappetizing to devils as they looked to him. He tried not to think of the trail of gore he must be leaving. Twice now, he’d had to turn and roll over to transfix and slay maggots nipping at his feet, and he’d lost count of the times he’d retched and spewed in helpless nausea at the sights and sounds all around.
Devils were clawing and disfiguring each other overhead right now, slitting eyes and tugging out entrails with eager savagery, spattering the rocks below with thankful lack of attention. Elminster crawled on, smiling inwardly at his looks. Well, he’d been a raven-haired, silken-hipped lass when that wasn’t his true shape, either, so he hadn’t much cause for complaint. Not that rocks listened to the complaints of broken archmages any more than they heeded the curses of other beings.
The ground trembled in the throes of a violent underground explosion. El tried not to think of what death traps caverns must become at such times. Another snarling fireball crossed the sky.
Sooner or later in this tortured landscape of rock and flame and bitter fumes, where devils roamed in search of too-scarce food or traveled in ruthless patrols—in the distance, a flying phalanx of abishai swooped in unison to spear squalling nupperibos—his luck would run out.
Sooner. Even as he slipped for the thousandth time and lost his wind in a belly-landing against saw-edged rocks, a spade-barbed tail rose in front of him. It was glossy-black and as large as his head. The body it was attached to must have been large indeed. El ground his face into the stones a moment before the razor-sharp tail cut across his head. The resounding slap set his skull ringing and drove him into a wavering upright posture. It had sliced open his scalp far enough back for his own blood not to blind him with its first drenching flood.
What a stroke of luck, indeed. With that sarcastic thought held in the forefront of his mind to keep Nergal from noticing what he was doing, El leaked a tiny amount of silver fire slowly out to stanch the bleeding. He lifted his head to see what was attacking him.
“Well,” purred what could only be another outcast archdevil. It reared up from the rocks in front of him. “What have we here?”
Three long, sinuous serpent tails rose from where they coiled around and amid rocks, to meet in an obsidian-hued body that had the shape of a lush human female torso. From the shoulders spread bat wings, dark beneath and ruby-red on their sleek outer surfaces. A forked-tongued and horned head swayed on the end of a neck that was too long, but otherwise looked both human and attractive. Unfortunately, the fingers extending in his direction ended in hooked, hawklike talons. Each was as long as Elminster’s arms.
Three barbed tails flipped up to slap the rocks in unison and propel the devil in an undulating charge. The swaying head came within a foot of Elminster’s own. Ale-brown eyes with flames flickering in their depths stared hard into blue-gray, weary human ones … and beautiful red lips snaked into a smile.
“A spell-twisted human, if I’m not mistaken … transformed why? I’d best see just who you are before I cook you for dinner or remake you into a more pleasant shape for my own amuse—”
The serpent-devil stiffened and hissed, rustling her wings with a single, convulsive shudder. She sent a mind-lance into Elminster … and found Nergal.
[ruby sun, blossoming and widening, serpentine awareness questing forth]
[tentacled giant turning to face the intrusion, gathering ominous strength]
“Ho-ho, a wizard of great power … memories aplenty here, both entertainment and something I could use, if I can but find the right remembrance … but hold: Here’s a taint that’s somehow famili—”
MALACHLABRA!
“Nergal!”
DIE, SERPENT-BITCH!
“Your turn to feed worms, Lord Most High of Nothing!”
[mind bolt, turned aside, raw agony, Elminster screaming as walls smash down, ceilings fall, chambers collapse … mental arrows, leaping one two three, struck aside and hurled back in bright array … El still screaming]
“Human, I am Malachlabra, Duchess of Hell and daughter of Dispater! Cleave to me, and I’ll rid your mind of this tentacled brute!”
[mind bolt strikes mind bolt, great flash, long despairing shriek of agony, El writhing as fires are hurled back and forth in his burning mind]
“Human, I … ah, your name is—Elminster! Elminster Aumar, cleave to me!”
Abishai veered away, spitting and shouting, as the serpent-devil reared up and spat ribbons of fire far across Avernus. She drove one long, cruel talon into the ungainly creature at her feet. His raw screams died into frothy barking, and even maggots shrank away from the thing of churning flesh, erupting limbs, and wetly jetting gases.
Far away, the ground shook. Malachlabra shouted in triumph. She was still laughing, raised upright into a sky she was raking with her talons, when Nergal’s reply came down upon her.
The red air shimmered, bled purple, and rolled back for an instant. It vomited huge purple spheres of roaring, trembling flame on all sides of the serpent-devil.
Then, of course, they exploded.
Convulsing talons whipped and cartwheeled past the ropy thing that was Elminster. Stones lashed at him, and he was drenched with she-devil gore. Torn and gutted lengths of serpent danced in macabre trembling long after they’d fallen among far stones. Where Malachlabra had been there was nothing but smoking, fresh-tumbled rocks—and black and crimson slime spattered on the stones.
All at once, as Nergal’s laughter thundered through Elminster’s mind, the thing of teeth and odd-shaped limbs and lumpy bodies shuddered. It ceased its shapeshifting chaos. Arching and snuffling, the transformed wizard writhed on blood-spattered rocks. Maggots reared up hungrily, yellow-white and glistening with slime. El, adrift in blood-shadows of suffering, never felt their gnawing.
SO YOU CAN CHANGE SHAPE AT WILL, LITTLE MAN? WELL, WELL? ANOTHER SECRET IT’S TIME YOU YIELDED TO ME? I’LL HAVE ALL OF THEM IN THE END, YOU KNOW—BUT BY THE FREEZING STYX, YOU MAKE IT HARD WORK, TEARING EVERY LAST ONE OUT OF YOU!
[Through rivers of blood, the tentacled creature shoulders fearlessly forward. Through many dark and shattered rooms, he seeks bright memories of shapeshifting.]
Silver fire threaded out, oh-so-subtly—mere droplets where rushing floods were needed. Face twisted in pain, Elminster Aumar writhed on the ground, slapping at maggots. As Nergal’s thought bored on, probing ever deeper into El, the long and fissured torso dwindled. Its limbs became human arms again.
El groaned and let a little wash of silver fire sear the maggots gnawing him. They fell away, slain instantly. He collaps
ed again with a groan. Let Nergal think the shapeshifting was my doing and not Malachlabra’s. Anything to keep him from noticing the fire …
[A great horned head looks sharply this way and that as it presses on through a mind where red rivers recede. Tentacles trail through the gore as it paces and peers.]
“Die, evil mage!” Cruel spears thrust like tongues of flame into his back. El snarls a curse that turns into a helpless spewing of blood. Spear points transfix him. They shove him forward, between the merlons, to plunge out into emptiness and down, down toward the stinking moat.
There are ragged cheers as he plummets, but they become shouts of alarm ere he reaches the ground. That landing will come somewhere else.
The ring on his finger has done its work. His very bones are rubbery. His skin itches, his body feels wet and empty and sick … and it’s flowing, changing as he struggles for breath. He watches the ground and the scum-cloaked water hurl itself up to meet him.…
Less than the height of a man away from smashing into that water, the black-robed body becomes a black star. The burst of dark radiance freezes for a moment. The watching crowds murmur. It drifts sideways in the breeze ere it winks out and is gone.…
* * * * *
Black, stinking pools bubble with sulfurous stinks. Cruel wasps alight on the heads of submerged, spellbound captives and thrust home their long stingers, trading venom for blood. The thrashing, foaming victims drown.
A sudden whirlpool pierces those waters. It turns up gigantic ribcages black with slime, and odd-shaped, unidentified things that are flung far and wide from the muck. At the heart of that whirlpool rises a cloud of red and black. It spins swiftly at first and then more slowly, to stand at last, revealed as—
“Malachlabra, Duchess of Hell and daughter of Dispater,” murmured the watching Tasnya. She banished her scrying image with a lazy wave of her hand before the distant serpent-devil would have a chance to feel her scrutiny. “You are such a headstrong fool. Almost as bad as Nergal.”
She gave her own cleverness a crooked smile and rolled over again to bite out the throat of an erinyes. As the others whimpered and shrank away from the gore-filled bed, the imps hovering above Tasnya never paused in their work, flogging her just the way she’d commanded, with the little barbed whips she’d fashioned. By the Nine, but she loved pain.
* * * * *
AGAIN YOU TRY TO DUPE ME, HUMAN! JUST HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK I AM?
[silence]
YES, YOU’D BETTER KEEP SILENT, ABOUT NOW. FIRE AND BLOOD, HOW HAVE YOU EVER FOUND ANYTHING IN THIS WALLOW-PIT YOU CALL A MIND? EVERY LINK HAS A SIDE TRAIL, EVERY MEMORY TWO OR THREE OVERLAPPING IT, AND YOU DANCE IN FRONT OF ME LIKE A LITTLE YAPPING IMP, THRUSTING ONE THING INTO MY FACE WHEN I SEEK ANOTHER! WHEN I’VE GOT YOUR SECRETS AT LAST, I’M GOING TO TAKE GREAT PLEASURE IN YOUR SLOW PAINFUL DEATH? I’M GOING TO TEAR TENDER ORGANS OFF YOU AND OUT OF YOU THAT YOU NEVER KNEW YOU HAD!
[silence tinged with weary amusement]
YES, I KNOW YOU SNEER AT DEVILS FOR THEIR UNSUBTLE CRUELTIES, LITTLE HUMAN WORM, BUT CREATURES CAN’T SNEER WHEN THEY’RE TOO BUSY SCREAMING.… YOU’LL DISCOVER THAT TOO! NOW, I WANT TO SEE MORE MEMORIES—SO GET ON WITH IT!
Steaming bowls of soup sat on the weathered kitchen table before them. Hot tankards of cider stood to one side. The two silver-haired women ignored both in favor of chuckling over the latest “Heartsteel” novel out of Sembia.
“ ‘Eyes flashing,’ ” a voice on the tremulous edge of helpless laughter announced unsteadily to the world, “ ‘she flung dweomers that flashed brightly at the otherworldly apparition.…’ ”
The other woman groaned in derisive disgust and fell into helpless gales of laughter a breath behind her sister.
Storm, who held both the book and the current title of Reader Aloud to the Assembled, mastered her mirth first. Tossing long hair back out of her eyes, she eyed her sister’s shaking shoulders and said gruffly, “None of that laughing, now—we’ve an epic to finish!”
“ ‘A bodice-throbbing saga of broken hearts and blazing spells!’ ” Syluné quoted with a fresh whoop of laughter. “Wherein boldly thrusting blades strike at the heart of evil, smiting aside chastity belts in the way!”
Storm looked up at her. “It doesn’t say that,” she protested mildly, her own lips trembling on the edge of laughter. “It says ‘along the way,’ I’m sure.” She did not bother to flip the book over to check.
Syluné descended into a fresh fit of giggles, buried her face in her hands, and waved at Storm to read on.
Storm gave her a dubious look, adjusted the ornate and rimless spectacles lower along her nose (they went with the post of Reader Aloud, for reasons both of them had forgotten some centuries ago), and cleared her throat loudly.
Syluné obediently sat up, eyes streaming, and stared at the ceiling to avoid meeting Storm’s eyes.
Storm gave her an amused look, and then raised the book once more and resumed the tale. “ ‘The gallant, rippling-muscled blue-black steed neighed as loudly as a temple bell as the knight in shining armor hurtled bravely down out of the balcony, tumbling through the crossbeams with sounds like unto an entire armory crashing into the same midden-pit, and slammed into his place in the high-cantled saddle—but facing backward. The clangor of tortured metal and the scream of the tortured knight that quite outsang it, startled the faithful war charger even more than the sudden heavy weight on its back, and it reared—almost spilling Sir Taen from his seat once more—and then galloped wildly down the length of the bedchamber. The startled princess sat up in bed just in time to see—’ ”
“Oh, stop!” Syluné sobbed, howling. Her rocking-chair creaked as its pace quickened into a near-canter; Storm watched with amusement as it commenced to walk across the floor, bringing the ribs of Syluné’s new body hard against the edge of the table.
Her laughter never faltered—even when the chair tipped forward and Syluné’s chin came down on the spoon with a clatter. It soared toward the rafters, and Storm waited for it to come down again, fielded it with a deft hand, and asked, “Could you kindly refrain from hurling the cutlery? We’re not dining at a royal table, you know!”
Syluné’s laughter redoubled. She threw herself backward, chair and all. Not surprisingly, the rocker took this as a signal to rock. Violently.
Storm rolled her eyes, sighed, and told her farmhouse ceiling, “It’s not much to ask, but it might just be too much to ask … if you take my meaning.”
The ceiling evidently did. Something small and light fluttered down from somewhere amid its loftier, dustier beams, dislodged in all the hubbub. Storm caught it and raised her palm to stare at it: a folded paper jumping frog that one of her Harper trainees had made three summers ago. He’d obviously flicked it aloft before leaving.
As Storm regarded the clever little thing, her mirth gave way to sadness. She’d buried that Harper’s gnawed bones in the Teshen backlands last winter; this little frog was all that was left of him now.
“Sister,” Syluné murmured, bereft of all humor, “I must go—Alustriel can tell you why!”
Storm lifted her head from the frog to stare at her older sister. Sylune’s head lolled, drooling and empty-eyed—before she pitched face-forward into the soup.
Storm stretched out a long arm to grab a good handful of hair, muttering too late, “Not in my soup, you don’t!”
She hauled the body back into a sitting position and set down the frog as if it was the most precious thing in the world. Then she sighed and took up her discarded apron to wipe the soup from Syluné’s vacant face. Lifting her sister’s discarded body up in her arms as if it weighed nothing, she gently carried it upstairs to a bed.
The Bard of Shadowdale looked down, sighed, and arranged the lifeless hands to clasp the Heartsteel novel to the still breast, in case she wasn’t around when Syluné returned.
Then she went downstairs and outside, to look across the dale she loved. She plucked up her tankard of cider along the way and wondering h
ow long it would be, this time, before she too was called to war.…
NO! NO! MORE TIME WASTING! BEAUTIFUL HUMANS, BUT WHAT INTEREST HAVE I IN SUCH? MAGIC I WANT, CURSE YOU, HUMAN! HOW CAN YOU STILL DEFY ME? HOW?
[growling, firmly quelled]
NO, I’LL NOT TEAR AND SNARL? I’LL DIVE INTO YOUR MIND ONCE MORE AND THIS TIME SEEK BEINGS YOU RESPECT BUT DO NOT CONSORT WITH SO CLOSELY. WHAT ELSE WOULD EARN YOUR RESPECT BUT REAL POWER? MAGIC TO TAME KINGDOMS WITH! MAGIC I CAN USE!
[red eyes burning, striding into dark rooms and tearing down what images are found there, clawing aside and seeking more …]
* * * * *
“L-lady Queen?” The young lass quavered, her face dissolving into terror. She trembled violently, too frightened to move. She desperately wanted to be anywhere but here, anywhere but kneeling and proffering flowers to the queen of Aglarond in the royal gardens.
Her mother looked on with a face as white as chalk.
The Simbul, the witch whose spells tore Red Wizards to blood and bones and smashed down towers and made mountains shatter, had suddenly scowled. She scowled even now, her hair rising and twisting along her shoulders as if with a life of its own—no, many lives, all of them eager to blast and destroy and lay waste to little girls who dared to offer flowers.
A small sob dragged the Witch-Queen of Aglarond back to awareness. Her gaze met the wild, trapped eyes of the little girl who’d made the sound.
A chill went through the Simbul. Nothing should ever happen to make little girls look like that. She mustered the warmest smile she could, knelt to say, “My thanks,” and bestowed a royal kiss on the trembling forehead. “Be welcome always in our gardens,” she added, raising the still-fearful girl to her feet and turning her head to give the anxious mother a smile.
The courtiers standing around visibly relaxed. The girl darted away like a rabbit from under the royal hand, heading for the safety of her mother’s skirts.
